Genex Tower is one of the most iconic buildings in the city of Belgrade. When construction was finished in 1979, it was hailed as a symbol of the city as well as of the Yugoslavian state. The left tower of the building consists of residential apartments, while the right tower was the former headquarters of the state-run import-export company Genex Group. Combining elements of socialist modernism and brutalism, it was built as a truly aspirational structure; a mirror of a society that considered itself on its way to greater human progress.
Three decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia and following the war and chaos that ravaged the region in the 90s, time has not left a neutral mark on the building. Genex Group has been undergoing bankruptcy proceedings since 2015, and only 10 floors of the commercial tower are still in use.
The Tower (2022 - ongoing) is a foray into the history of the building and the stories and personalities surrounding it. The series touches on the way past bleeds into present, as well as some of the dichotomies that the building embodies. At once a part of the city’s landscape and separate from it, occupying a gulf between aspiration and reality, it is a symbol of a socialist worldview towering above a post-socialist landscape.
(More coming soon)
