South, South! Let’s Go South!

South, South! Let’s Go South!, the publication accompanying the 30th Nadežda Petrović Memorial, marked the 60th anniversary of one of Serbia’s oldest and most significant exhibitions of contemporary visual art. Conceived as a large-scale regional gathering, the exhibition and catalogue reimagined the Memorial as a site of encounter, exchange, and collective reflection, bringing together artists from across the territories of the former Yugoslavia and the wider Balkan region.

Featuring 30 participants — including artists and collectives from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia — the publication reflects on the complex political, social, and cultural conditions shaping artistic production in Southeast Europe today. Through essays, visual documentation, and artist presentations, the book addresses questions of migration, peripheral identities, social exclusion, urban transformation, post-socialist transition, and the unstable position of the region within broader global narratives.

The exhibition unfolded across eleven locations throughout the city of Čačak, ranging from institutional galleries and museums to public squares, parks, shop windows, and historical sites. This dispersed structure positioned the Memorial itself as a living urban network, foregrounding contemporary art’s relationship to public space, civic memory, and local social realities.

The title South, South! Let’s Go South! evokes both historical and symbolic geographies. Referencing Serbia’s nineteenth-century industrial modernisation and the southward expansion associated with the first railway through the Sićevo Gorge, the exhibition simultaneously reflects on the broader condition of the “South” as a political, cultural, and psychological space marked by migration, displacement, aspiration, and historical fragmentation. Positioned against contemporary movements toward the “West” in search of economic, educational, and political stability, the project interrogates shifting notions of belonging and collective identity within the post-Yugoslav condition.

The visual identity of the Memorial centred around the Čačak Rubber Tree (Ficus elastica), the oldest and largest southern tree in the Balkans, which has grown for decades inside the Cultural Centre itself. Treated as a metaphorical and conceptual emblem for the exhibition, the tree’s rhizomatic expansion became a symbol of interconnectedness, adaptation, and survival — echoing the decentralised and heterogeneous character of contemporary artistic practice across the region.

Through its constellation of artists, venues, and discursive frameworks, the publication positions the Memorial not simply as an exhibition, but as a platform for rethinking the social and cultural landscapes of the contemporary South.