Arriving at Zagreb airport, the idea was simple: to collaborate on a journey from the city center to Novi Zagreb, exploring its brutalist architecture. Elena, born in a planned district of Vilnius, immediately found resonance with the concept, while Zagreb, caught between capitalism and communism, felt like the perfect backdrop. The city became a shared space to explore the tension between these two ideologies.
For Ody, born in a capitalist society, with a family persecuted for their communist beliefs, and the other, from a post-communist Lithuania, where a family faced persecution for leaning towards capitalism, this journey was more than just about buildings, it was about history, identity, and personal experience. Zagreb stood as a city that, like both individuals, had navigated complex ideological terrains.
As the journey unfolded, photographs captured the fragments of a city, from the basketball stadium to the Raketes complex, from the Cube, once the heart of the Croatian Communist Party, to the Novi Zagreb fairgrounds. Each step through these spaces became an exploration of the city’s evolution, mirroring the ways in which personal histories intersected with broader political shifts.
Together, the journey wasn’t just a physical exploration of Zagreb, it became a reflection on the paths taken, the forces at play, and the shared experiences of navigating ideologies. Through these brutalist monuments, conversations unfolded about the intersections of the past and present, and how memories of political shifts still shape the spaces we occupy.
