An interview with Vesna Pavlović about the exhibition conceived by a collaborative team including Vladimir Kulić, Jelica Jovanović, Fredo Rivera, Ana Knežević, and Emilia Epštajn, on how prefabrication, research, and fieldwork trace a living history of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Life in Matanzas, Cuba, 2023. © Vesna Pavlović
‘Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS Žeželj Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola’ traces an extraordinary circulation of building technology across three continents in the 1970s. Developed in Belgrade in 1957 by engineer Branko Žeželj, the IMS system of concrete columns, slabs, and steel cables travelled to Cuba and Angola through networks of the Non-Aligned Movement, where it was adapted to local needs and used for mass housing. The exhibition brings together archival research, sculptural models, video interviews, and contemporary photographs to map this triangle of technological exchange and the communities it shaped. In this interview, Vesna Pavlović reflects on solidarity as a built practice, the postcolonial retooling of prefabrication, and what fieldwork in Matanzas and Luanda revealed about memory, resilience, and everyday life. She also speaks about the team’s collaborative methods, the exhibition’s wooden display structures, and the ways images can document, translate, and contest the histories embedded in concrete and hope.
‘Prefabricating Solidarity’ forms part of Somewhere We Are Human, a series of exhibitions and public programs conceived and organised by Curator Grace Aneiza Ali with the leadership of Professor María Magdalena Campos-Pons, EADJ Founder and Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Art, and with the support of the EADJ team, Danielle Myers, Program Manager, and Simon Tatum, Program Coordinator. Somewhere We Are Human takes its title from the anthology gathering voices on migration, survival, and new beginnings, edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca.
‘Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS-Žeželj Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola’ exhibition. Photos of EADJ Programs for the exhibition at Begonia Labs. Courtesy of the Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice (EADJ), Vanderbilt University. Photo: Ife Ayewale.
The exhibition title ‘Prefabricating Solidarity’ suggests that solidarity itself can be built, constructed piece by piece, much like the architectural systems it explores. How does the exhibition invite us to rethink what solidarity meant within the Non-Aligned Movement and what it might mean today?
Vesna Pavlović: The ‘Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS Žeželj between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola’ exhibition brings together a contemporary gaze towards the sophisticated architectural system invented in 1957 by engineer Branko Žeželj at the IMS Institute in Belgrade, the former capital of then Yugoslavia. The exhibition includes archival research conducted by the team of architectural historians, including Jelica Jovanović, Vladimir Kulić, and Fredo Rivera; sculptural models of the IMS buildings themselves, representing three geographic locations — Serbia, Cuba, and Angola; and a set of 10 panels of contemporary photography by Vesna Pavlović. A set of video interviews was conducted with architects, engineers, and urbanists in each country, nested within the sculptural renditions of the IMS buildings. Merging historical narratives with contemporary perspectives of the IMS architectural system and its distribution, the exhibition invites us to imagine the solidarity which existed among the three countries, members of the Non-Aligned Movement. Even though geographically distant, these three countries were brought together by shared historical experiences and political aspirations. What does it mean today to remember this kind of solidarity? While exposing the past, the exhibition offers a sense of hope for the future.
Block 21, Belgrade, Serbia, 2025. © Vesna Pavlović
Prefabrication has historically been linked to colonial expansion and industrial standardisation. In what ways did the IMS-Žeželj system transform this legacy into a postcolonial tool for mutual development between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola?
As Vladimir Kulić writes in the exhibition catalogue, “Finding identical structural components in buildings thousands of kilometres apart might seem unremarkable in an age of globalised technology. Yet the triangle connecting Belgrade, Matanzas, and Luanda is unusual.
For centuries, modern technologies flowed primarily from imperial ‘centres’ to colonial ‘peripheries.’ Prefabricated construction itself emerged as a distinctly colonial technology, developed to facilitate the rapid settlement of distant territories under European control. Against this background, the journey of these concrete components across Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola follows an unusual trajectory that defies familiar patterns of technological dissemination.
All three had endured various forms of imperial subjugation, had embraced socialism, and had belonged to the Non-Aligned Movement, which envisioned a radical reorganisation of global politics and the economy to undo centuries of colonial exploitation and uneven development.
Community Garden, Havana, Cuba, 2024. © Vesna Pavlović
However, what socialism and non-alignment meant varied significantly among them: Yugoslavia pursued the path of decentralised socialist self-management, with its non-alignment stemming from resistance to Soviet imperial pressures; Cuba adopted a more centralised socialist model, viewing non-alignment as a platform for promoting socialism globally, often in alliance with the USSR; and Angola, caught in a prolonged civil war where outside powers pursued their own interests, barely had the opportunity to develop its own distinctive approach to either socialism or non-alignment.
Despite these differences, what united them was a broader project of mutual support and development—one that encompassed various forms of cooperation among the world’s less powerful nations. The circulation of building technologies among these countries exemplified the broader ambitions of their cooperation, moving through channels defined by solidarity rather than dependence.
They were freed from both Western intellectual property regimes that extracted wealth through licensing fees and from the constraints of Soviet assistance, which, though less directly extractive, still tethered developing economies to Moscow’s sphere of influence.”
His observation captures how the IMS-Žeželj system challenged colonial hierarchies of knowledge transfer and became a tool for solidarity and mutual development.
The Agostinho Neto Memorial, Luanda, Angola, 2024. © Vesna Pavlović
The curatorial team’s fieldwork spanned three continents, from Belgrade to Luanda to several cities across Cuba, including Matanzas, where many early discussions around these ideas began during the Ríos Intermitentes project in 2019. Could you speak to how these travels and conversations shaped the curatorial process for ‘Prefabricating Solidarity’ and what kinds of stories or connections emerged from this shared research journey?
In 2019, I was invited by Prof. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons to take part in one of the most eminent international exhibitions of contemporary art, the 13th Havana Biennial, held from April 16 to May 16, 2019, in Havana and in Matanzas, respectively.
The Intermittent Rivers project featured international artistic projects in the vibrant Cuban city of Matanzas to address the city’s dense cultural history, traditions, and geography. The video I created for the Intermitentes Rivers section of the Biennial brought me to the city of Alamar. Built in the 1970s, east of Havana, the town incorporated public housing for the growing socialist state.
A return to architecture and an exploration of the relationship between ideology and representation informs my work in the ‘Prefabricating Solidarity’ project. It also relies on my previous collaborations with Vladimir Kulić and Jelica Jovanović, as well as on my investigation of the modernist architecture of the former Yugoslavia.
The research team visited Cuba twice to conduct interviews and photograph the IMS buildings. During one of the interviews, performed with the urban planner Gina Rey at her IMS apartment, we established a connection with her counterpart in Luanda, Angola, Prof. Isabel Martins (Architecture Department, University of Agostinho Neto, Luanda).
‘Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS-Žeželj Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola’ exhibition. Photos of EADJ Programs for the exhibition at Begonia Labs. Courtesy of the Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice (EADJ), Vanderbilt University. Photo: Ife Ayewale.
It was the people who made the travel and transfer of the IMS Žeželj system possible. In Luanda, we were welcomed by the architect and curator Paula Nascimento and the cultural producer Ngoi Salucombo, who both provided logistical support for our research.
Our journeys allowed us to establish new connections and friendships within the community of artists and architects, including the Verkron Art collective, whose exhibition we witnessed in Luanda.
Your own practice as an artist often engages with archives and the politics of photographic representation. How did that sensibility shape the curatorial approach to documenting and presenting the architecture in ‘Prefabricating Solidarity’?
In previous projects, I documented the ceremonial places of Yugoslav socialism, including hotels built in the 1950s that now represent a culture inscribed in space—testimonies to yesterday’s visions of the future.
I photographed the Palace of Federation in Belgrade, a significant monument to the political history of former Yugoslavia. Adorned with art and design from the former Yugoslav republics, the Palace serves as a mausoleum for the concept of brotherhood and unity. This concept seems to have been forgotten amid the country’s disintegration in the 1990s.
The photographs of the ‘Prefabricating Solidarity’ project are organised into five sections without geographic specificity: Factory, Transfer and Adaptation, Community, People, and No Ordinary Sunsets.
Factory depicts the Institute for Testing of Materials in Belgrade, where the IMS system was developed and still thrives in its operational labs and materials.
Transfer and Adaptation provide a perspective on the ecosystem created by buildings and plants. The tropical climate of the Caribbean and Western Africa supported the co-existence of lush plants and concrete.
Gina Rey in her IMS Apartment, Havana, Cuba, 2024. © Vesna Pavlović
The People section opens with the portrait of Gina Rey. Contemporary history co-exists with Cuba’s post-revolutionary history in the image, in the form of Rey’s faded photographic album. In this section, architects, artists, and urban planners stand proudly against the buildings that have withstood the test of time and climate.
The Community section emphasises that people still occupy the IMS buildings and neighbourhoods. At times, they seem like self-contained cities. People’s lives are reflected in the buildings’ facades, in the in-between spaces of congregations, parks, daycares, and schools, offering a macro view of life, history, and politics.
In the final section, titled “No Ordinary Sunsets,” melancholy prevails. Luanda evolves through many layers. The IMS system’s buildings are, for the most part, difficult to find. The sun is setting across the Atlantic Ocean as a coda to our Angolan journey—a moment of beauty set against the country’s complex history.
Installation view of ‘Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS-Žeželj Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola’ exhibition at Begonia Labs. Photo: Vesna Pavolić.
The exhibition was conceived by a team of six, including architects, historians, and artists, working across multiple countries and institutions. How did you navigate that collaborative process, and how did each perspective enrich the project?
Team members, including Jelica Jovanović, Vladimir Kulić, Fredo Rivera, and me, had the opportunity to travel together to all research sites in the past four years. In spring 2024, the team met at the Vanderbilt Department of Art for the IMS Solidarity workshop to experiment with the printing materials ahead of the first exhibition of the work at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade. Opportunity to show this work in Belgrade first and then at the Engine for Arts, Democracy, and Justice, Begonia Labs provided for the institutional cross-continent collaboration. The ‘Prefabricating Solidarity’ exhibition belongs within the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice 2024–2025 public programs and engagement that is organised around the thematic north star — Somewhere We Are Human — a collective vision for a time and space where no one’s humanity is ever in question.
Each contributor to the project provided a specific perspective from their respective fields, including the development, historical adaptation, and transfer of the system. It was essential to include the voices of architects and scholars who have explored the implementation and lived environments of the system, including Prof. Ruslan Muñoz (Faculty of Architecture, Havana, Cuba) and Claudia Gastrow (College of Humanities and Social Sciences, North Carolina State University).
‘Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS-Žeželj Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola’ exhibition. Photos of EADJ Programs for the exhibition at Begonia Labs. Courtesy of the Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice (EADJ), Vanderbilt University. Photo: Simon Tatum
The exhibition is housed within a series of wooden structures that frame the photographs, archives, and videos. Could you speak about the thinking behind this built environment and how it shaped the visitor experience? In what ways does the use of wood connect to the exhibition’s broader ideas of construction, translation, and collaboration?
It has been a true pleasure engaging with the exhibition audiences in the past couple of months. The unique exhibition display is the result of the team’s close collaboration with the Croatian Object Order design group on both the exhibition and catalogue design. The exhibition offers a visual conflict between the archival and contemporary visual narratives present in both the catalogue and the exhibition display. The exhibition evokes a city where building frames open plazas for community gatherings. Various classes at Vanderbilt University, including sculpture, photography, contemporary art, design, and architecture, have engaged with and catalysed dialogue about solidarity with the exhibition’s content. The materiality of the exhibition objects stands out, even their smell. The wooden panels support archival research on each of the three countries. Video interviews with the system makers, the architects, engineers, and urban planners provide a more complete picture of the transfer and adaptation of the IMS Žeželj system. Photographs are printed on construction materials such as plywood and drywall. Photographic panels are displayed along the walls, offering a view into city life.
Basketball Court, Luanda, Angola, 2024. © Vesna Pavlović
Although the Non-Aligned Movement’s political project waned by the 1990s, the buildings remain, still lived in and still standing. What do you hope visitors will carry with them from this exhibition about the endurance of shared imagination and infrastructure?
We hope that visitors from younger generations learn about the IMS Žeželj system and reflect on what solidarity means to them today, and what it takes to support each other in times of crisis and historical obsolescence. The collective imaginary of the forgotten political concept, such as non-alignment, held a significant promise in the late 20th century. In my photography, I question the role of photography in the process of remembering history, both public and private. Memory continues to live in the spaces of non-alignment, in the buildings, monuments, materials, and the archives. Excavating them may offer a sense of hope and activate a space of promise.
On view at Begonia Labs, Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice, Nashville, through December 5, 2025, details and hours at Vanderbilt University.
