Yugoslavia Pavilion for the Paris Expo, Josip Seissel (1937)

Dr. Aleksandra Stamenkovic constructs the struggle to unify post-imperial South Slavic identities, through Josip Seissel’s Yugoslavia Pavilion for the Paris Expo in 1937.

The collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires in the First World War birthed a new European state – the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. National pavilions at international exhibitions, or Expos, became vital platforms to project the state’s internal unity and external strength on the global stage. Yugoslavia’s prize-winning pavilion for the Paris Expo in 1937 fused contemporary European and classical aesthetics, projecting a progressively modern culture steeped in diverse, Slavic histories. But it was also an identity-construction site, exposing elites’ struggle to create a new, unified, post-imperial identity.

PRESENTER: Dr. Aleksandra Stamenkovic, Belgrade-based art historian and independent researcher. She specialises in contemporary Serbian and European architectural history.

ART: Yugoslavia Pavilion for the Paris Expo, Josip Seissel (1937).

IMAGE: ‘International Exposition dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life, Yugoslavia Pavilion’.

SOUNDS: Paniks.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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