The timeline begins on January 1, 1990, when the then Prime Minister Ante Marković introduced the convertible dinar, and ends on December 23, 2000 - the day when parliamentary elections were held in Serbia and DOS won a convincing victory. Between those two dates, we had the independence of one by one former Yugoslav republics, the flourishing of war-mongering propaganda, thousands of dead and missing in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, the murder of journalists, but also of the former president of the SR Serbia, Ivan Stambolić, turbo-folk and dance, diesel music, the introduction of multi-year sanctions on the FRY, the flourishing of organized crime, the rise of the tycoon class and, now forgotten, the 1990 Eurovision Song Contest in Zagreb, won by Toto Coutinho with a song about the unification of Europe.
This turbulent decade is represented by a permanent exhibition Labyrinth of the nineties, whose authors are historian Dubravka Stojanović, writer Igor Štiks and director of KC Grad Dejan Ubović. It was opened on June 3 as part of the M90 Foundation, at Kneza Miloša Street 3 in Belgrade, in a house that recently celebrated its 150th birthday. It belonged to Čedomil Mijatović (1842–1932), one of the most important liberals, head of Serbian diplomacy for two terms, minister of finance six times and president of the Serbian Royal Academy, as well as his wife, the Englishwoman Elodia, who wrote the history of Serbia, founded the Serbian-British Society and brought spiritualism to Belgrade. After them, the Mišić family lived there, descendants of Živojin Mišić's brother.
Goal The labyrinth of the nineties is to start the process of "looking at the decade that changed the lives of millions of people in this region (but also globally), and whose consequences we still feel today, perhaps more than ever. The display in front of visitors poses the question of whether we as individuals and societies have come out of the labyrinth we fell into in the early nineties."
Labyrinth is part of the "Museum of the Nineties" initiative, and different versions of this exhibition were installed in the Deret Center in Belgrade in 2023, in the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo in 2024, and in the Modern Gallery of the Museum and Gallery of Podgorica now, in May. Jelena Pavlović, PR of the M90 Foundation, explains that now "the Belgrade permanent exhibition asks every visitor the same key question: where were you in this labyrinth and did you get out of it? In this sense, the exhibition does not act only as a narrative about the past, but as a tool for understanding the present".
The collection of materials and research lasted four years, and Dubravka Stojanović admits that the authors often joke that the biggest advantage was that they had no money for two years, so there were no deadlines and they could work on the concept in peace. "When we came up with an idea, we invited our colleagues from the former Yugoslavia to hear the plan, and they harshly criticized us and asked: 'What new do you want to say?' After that, we put away everything we had done up to that point and started from the beginning. After many months of thinking and talking, Igor Štiks came up with the idea that our exhibition should be made in the form of a labyrinth and that its main task is to awaken people's emotions, to return them to the labyrinth we entered 30 years ago and encourage them to think. The labyrinth should evoke emotions of fear, anxiety, claustrophobia, empathy... do we want to get out of it".
TEN ROOMS
photo: bojan kovacevic…from the Happiness room…
Viewers wander through narrow corridors - to convey the feeling of being stuck, and ten thematically divided rooms are connected by hidden passages or dark "tunnels", similar to Sarajevo during the siege (all with the inscription "Watch out, sniper!").
For Dubravka Stojanović, the "Happiness" room is the saddest. The authors of the legend remind us that even in times of war, people tried to laugh, have fun, and enjoy themselves. They gave birth to children and got married under sniper fire. The happiness of war is evoked by a photo of a newly married couple on the streets of Sarajevo in the middle of a siege. The bride wears a white knee-length dress, a wreath in her hair and a bouquet of flowers as she looks lovingly at the groom. Children with a ball while playing in the water are also happy. The message on the wall is more than clear: "Love will save us!"
In the second room, socio-historical changes are shown on the example of signs with street names that have been replaced by more "appropriate" ones - Serbian, Croatian, Bosniak ones. There are street signs for Sava Kovačevića, Vukovarska, Banjička žrtava, Mata Vidakovića and Žarko Marinovića, the same one whose picture the students now carry on their banners. The piquancy is the stamps with the sinking of the "Titanic", with which the PTT marked eighty years since the most famous shipwreck in the world in 1992, the work of Radomir Bojanić. At that moment, Yugoslavia was counting its last days.
The hands are also an interesting exhibit, with explanations of what their movements meant at which moment. Latin V, as victory, taken over by Croatian soldiers in the war and Albanian politicians and demonstrators in Kosovo; the thumb and forefinger in the shape of a Latin L were used by supporters of the Liberal Union of Montenegro; raised three fingers as a Serbian symbol was popularized by Vuk Drašković during the protests on March 9, 1991; five outstretched fingers were taken over by the BiH Army at the beginning of the war, and the motif was found on the stećak; the raised clenched fist was the symbol of "Resistance" during the rebellion against the Milosevic regime.
photo: bojan kovacevic...striped photo of Siniša Mihajlović...
There is also the story of the national hero Stjepan (Stevan) Filipović, whose monument was demolished in his native Opuzen and a shopping center was built, and we also witness a picture from the famous Dinamo-Zvezda match at Maksimir in 1990, which was interrupted due to a conflict between the fans (Zvezda's "delije" was led by Arkan). There is also a screened photograph of football player Sinisa Mihajlović from his youth, found in his birthplace in Borovo. Election posters, nationalist press, cult "Feral Tribune", record of the anti-war band "Rim tuti tuki", banknotes with many zeros as a symbol of one of the biggest inflations ever recorded, guns, silicone inserts as a trademark of pop stars, the flower of Srebrenica, the Arizona market in Dubrava, cigarette and gasoline smuggling where many of today's businessmen "practiced", political murders and mutual settlements between criminals, the famous Sarajevo Theater under siege - some new kids will see all this for the first time, and their parents will remember it. And then follows the decline of social enterprises and workers and the symbol of the new class - the golden toilet bowl...
Igor Štiks explains that "this is not an exhibition exclusively about war or mass crimes, but about the whole complex decade in which people got married, concerts were held, and we laughed and cried. We also want to show socio-economic change through a room called 'Transition', from which you can see how the dismantling of a society and the primitive accumulation of capital took place. The so-called businessmen in suits set out to loot everything that was left of Yugoslavia. We also show humorous segments of the nineties, which also talk about trauma, such as a penchant for prophetesses, the supernatural and the magical”.
photo: bojan kovacevic…new street names
TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMA
When they were setting up the first Belgrade exhibition two years ago, Dubravka Stojanović often cried. At first she thought it was a strange reaction since they had been working on the concept for a long time and she knew every exhibit and every legend by heart. And then she realized that the labyrinth gave everything a strong emotion: "Those transitions from dark to light rooms, specially lit exhibits strongly emphasized our messages. Then the journalists came to see the exhibition first, so they cried too. And then many visitors also experienced that emotion. Of course, we all cried first of all over ourselves and the wasted decades of our lives. Books of impressions, as well as the entire wall of impressions in Sarajevo, tell us that we managed to convey emotions which we wanted to encourage visitors to think about others. And it's not just a feeling of sadness, we managed to convey a whole bunch of emotions, so you don't leave the exhibition depressed, on the contrary. It was also very poignant when our colleagues from Sarajevo said to us during the preparation: 'Don't talk about us, let us see how it was for others, because we don't know it.'
For Jelena Pavlović, each exhibit is impressive, but also educational, as it opens up space for learning from a wider, more layered angle. "We grew up with a rather one-sided version of history, often limited by national frameworks, and this setting offers different perspectives. It is also an opportunity to better understand our parents, as some visitors, representatives of my generation said, but also their choices, fears and the circumstances in which they lived. This is especially important for our personal maturation, but also for empathy and responsibility towards the past. The music of the nineties is very close to me because it marked my childhood. On the other hand, certain parts, especially those that regarding the siege of Sarajevo, they were completely unknown to me".
Igor Štiks says that "this exhibition carries hope and is the right setting for those who are empathetic, who understand that it is dedicated to people whose lives were changed in one day, who were victims of wars or fought against them. If your perception of reality is rigid and rigid, if you are afraid of hearing something different from what you believe, if you are afraid of others and listen when they tell you not to go to Belgrade for parties or to Croatia for the sea, then the exhibition is not for you".
He adds that the reactions of the younger audience show that the events of the 1990s are actually a transgenerational trauma, which is why going to an exhibition like this is similar to visiting a psychotherapist. "We had the opportunity to see the strong emotional reactions of children who were not even born at that time, but who know that all these stories are present in their home, albeit in a fragmentary, unclear way. Parents avoid talking about that period or a negative ethnic label of the other appears, which is often and understandable when it comes to the victims of war and the refugee population. Now their children want to know more and this is a way to bring it closer to them. You cannot push things under the carpet. Dominant narratives in the newly created to the states they proved to be restrictive, illogical, incoherent, leaking in all directions. Hence, a little curiosity will lead them to a much more complex picture".
CONSENSUS
Even before it was opened, the installation caused a lot of attention and comments. Dubravka Stojanović thinks that for the public who does not want to think about the nineties, everything can be disputed, because "she is only looking for confirmation of her opinion and a reason to keep her head in the sand, not to think, not to be shaken and push on as if it were nothing. This exhibition asks questions, does not give answers. It has the task of encouraging visitors to think by bringing back their emotions. We do not offer a one-sided story, but to relive a difficult experience in depth. That is why I believe that criticism can only be malicious. I have not yet read any a negative comment that was reasoned. And a reasoned criticism would have helped us a lot, as it was at the beginning. But there were also fierce criticisms from colleagues who had not even seen the exhibition," says our interlocutor.
When asked if it is too early for a statement about the 30s, given that there is no consensus about what was survived, Dubravka Stojanović answers counter-questions: "Is there a consensus about the Second World War? Or about the First? Or about the French Revolution? Not to mention the collapse of the Roman Empire. There is never, in fact, a consensus about the past. And there should not be one. Because our understanding of the past depends on our values, political orientation, context, the time in which we live. That is why history is a field of open debate, and not a dogma that must be believed. As soon as you set it as a dogma, different views will remain on the margins, feeling deprived and waiting for the moment of upheaval. Of course, there are facts that are proven, but the interpretations are different. In the archives of the Hague Tribunal, you can find all the documents that are state secrets the archives are still closed not to mention other types of sources - media, photos, videos. And XNUMX years have passed since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, which is quite enough even for conservative standards to open the archive."
Who are the heroes?
Srđan Aleksić from Trebinje, died as a result of a gunshot wound in 1993 after he saved his Bosniak neighbor who was being attacked. Tomo Buzov, a retired JNA captain, was killed after trying to save 19 Bosniak passengers who were taken off the Belgrade-Bar train by the Osvetnici paramilitary unit. Compulsively mobilized soldier Vladimir Živković, who in September 1991, as a sign of protest against the war, brought a tank from the Vukovar front to the National Assembly in Belgrade. The mobilized Miroslav Milenković, who killed himself in Šida in the fall of 1991 between two conflicting groups of reservists, one of which wanted to go to the front and the other to desert. Josip Reihl-Kir, commander of the police in Osijek, who intensively participated in the negotiations between the conflicting parties, and was killed in an ambush. Vladimir Barović, who refused to shell coastal towns from Vis, and then committed suicide in protest. Goran Čengić, a famous handball player, was killed in 1992 in Grbavica when he tried to save his neighbor Husnija Ćerimagić. Journalist and writer Siniša Glavašević, who bravely reported from the besieged Vukovar, after which he was killed at the Ovčara farm. General Goran Trifunović, who refused to bomb Varaždin and saved 280 soldiers and officers by surrendering the barracks. One wall of the labyrinth is dedicated to them.
