Svetlana Kana Radevic

On the Periphery of Postwar Architecture...

As part of this year’s Biennale Architettura, an exhibition about life and work of Svetlana Kana Radevic, one of the most prominent architects of South-East Europe, will take place. The exhibition will show her, so far unseen, private archive consisting of drawings, photographs and correspondences, as well as other artefacts displaying Kana’s impressive work and life.

Svetlana Kana Radević (1937-2000) is among the most prominent architects in socialist Yugoslavia and will be the subject of an exhibition which will showcase some of her best works, among them being the anti-fascist memorials, hotels, residential projects, and civic buildings. Photographs, original drawings, correspondences and other documents stem from her private archive, so far unseen by the public and put at disposal to the exhibition team by Kana’s family. The archival materials reflect her stylistic tendency and her character clearly – merging local materials and international Brutalist tendencies, always with one foot in her hometown of Titograd (today’s Podgorica), where she ran her namesake atelier, while at the same time holding tight to her international network in, among other places, Philadelphia and Tokyo. Skirting the Center – Svetlana Kana Radevic on the Periphery of Postwar Architecture will present to the international audiences an exceptional, if overlooked, figure of postwar architecture.

The exhibition aims to significantly expand Radević’s representation within the architectural canon by exhibiting the highlights of her built work for the first time: the Hotel Podgorica (1964-1967) and the Hotel Zlatibor (1979-1981), which aimed to make the best of socialist lifestyle accessible to both locals and foreign visitors; the Petrovac Apartment Building (1968), with its sculptural façade and generous apartment plans; as well as the Monument to Fallen Fighters at Barutana (1980), a sculptural memorial landscape that commemorates local anti-fascist fighters.

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