Trešnjevka – the area and the people
Zagreb Neighbourhoods project created and headed by Kristian Strukić
Exhibition concept devised by Kristian Strukić and Goran Arčabić
Separate exhibition parts devised by Tomislav Anić, Goran Arčabić, Ivan Mlinar, Kristian Strukić, Marko Zubak
Exhibition design by Nikolina Jelavić Mitrović
Exhibition visual identity by Igor Kuduz – D72
This exhibition is the fourth phase of the several-year-long interdisciplinary project Zagreb Neighbourhoods that started in 2009. In the fourth segment of the project, we are dealing with the outskirts of Zagreb and their transformation since the second half of the 19th century.
The study exhibitions shown under the aegis of the project endeavour to figure to visitors the neighbourhood and its inhabitants, joining the view from outside (spatial development, building, social life, the economy, everyday life) with personal experience. The approach in which memories of the individual and photographs from family albums are important parts of the script of the exhibition contribute to the Museum’s outreach activities. The stories told from the perspective of real-life actors impart to the exhibitions a bit of the atmosphere of the everyday life of the neighbourhood and provide a view from the inside onto the space, the events and the values.
Once just outskirts, and at the beginning of the 21st century two city neighbourhoods, Trešnjevka is the site of many metamorphoses. From the appearance of the place names Črešnjevka and Trešnjevka, via the creation of the village and the growth of working-class settlements to the south and west of the railway line off towards Sisak, to their integration into the city, the exhibition aims at delving into the history of the spaces of today’s city neighbourhoods, Trešnjevka North and Trešnjevka South, in all their complexity. Town planning, architecture, modernisation and social life as well as the everyday are represented in the two larger and two smaller topics (the latter being on the Sava River and Savska Road).
We are depicting Trešnjevka as a whole, but endeavouring to make visible various parts of the neighbourhoods, the historical settlements and spaces that have identities of their own: Ciglenica, Gajevo, Gredice, Horvati, Jarun, Knežija, Ljubljanica, Pongračevo, Prečko, Remiza, Rudež, Srednjaci, Staglišće, Stara Trešnjevka, Voltino and Vrbani. In this segment we have employed memories of the inhabitants and photographs from family albums.
The exhibition Trešnjevka – the area and the people carries on from previous study exhibitions: Half a century of Trnsko – the story of a generation (2010); Zagreb’s Dubrava – from suburb to city (2012) and Maksimir – history and neighbourhood symbols (2014).
In a manner similar to that of previous Zagreb Neighbourhoods exhibitions, enthusiasts and institutions active in Trešnjevka have given their help to provide as full an image of the neighbourhood as possible. This time the Museum’s partners in producing the exhibition have been the Trešnjevka Culture Centre and the Mapping Trešnjevka project.
After the exhibition Trešnjevka – the area and the people, Zagreb City Museum will hold an exhibition representing Trnje (March to May, 2018). With these exhibitions, identical in concept, we shall compare the histories of neighbourhoods linked by the dramatic spatial transformations and changes of life circumstances in the last hundred or so years.