Yugoslav-African Solidarity, Women and Personal Archives: The Case of Olja Džuverović’s Archive

This is a video of a lecture given at the Museum of African Art, Belgrade, Serbia in September 2021 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the NAM Conference in Belgrade.

As the custodian of the Non-Aligned Movement Solidarity (NAMSA) Archive, since 2021 I have been leading on the research, activation, preservation, cataloguing and the development of this archive, held at Chelsea College of Arts. The archive documents Yugoslav political relations with Sub-Saharan African countries during the period of decolonisation, in particular focussing on the country's relations with Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Angola.

This is an ongoing research initiative with no specific end date. So far, the following activities have taken place as a way of activating the archive. This is a summary of the work so far (up to February 2026) and more information can be found under individual entries.

NAMSA Activity to date:
• Created a top level database of materials in the archive (ongoing). Available as an Excel spreadsheet.
• Non-Aligned World Symposium, “Invisible Non-Aligned: Omitted History” Museum of African Art, Belgrade, panelist (Zoom presentation available online). September 2021
• Made the NAMSA archive available to MA Curating and Collections students as a teaching resource for where it has been used as a resource for Curatorial Research Labs, 2023 – ongoing, leading to displays at Chelsea.
• Formed the Yugoslav Non-Aligned Solidarity Working Group, consisting of scholars, artists and curators internationally interested in the histories of NAM, aiming to research pathways through the archive. 2022 - ongoing
• Showcased the archive as an installation at "Which Side Are You On?: On the Non-Aligned Decolonial Constellation," curated by Ivana Vaseva and Bojana Piškur at the National Opera and Ballet in Skopje, 2022,
• Showcased the archive as an installation at Art at Work - At the Crossroads between Utopianism and (In)Dependence,Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova +MSUM, Ljubljana, by Zdenka Badovinac, Ana Mizerit, Bojana Piškur, and Igor Španjol, with special sections by Sezgin Boynik and Jelena Vesić., 2023
• Participation in seminar at VanAbbe Museum - Geographies of Non-Belonging: From the Non-Aligned Movement to Counter-Colonial Art Cartographies, Lana Čmajčanin, art theorist Jelena Petrović and KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture, 2022
• Workshop with the working group of the ‘Yugoslav Non-Aligned Movement Solidarity Archive, the Documents of Olja Dzuverovic’ at the The Mosaic Rooms, London, 2023
• Commissined a new artwork as part of Hope is a Discipline Exhibition (60th October Salon Biennial), by Darinka Pop Mitic with the Yugoslav Non-Aligned Solidarity Working Group* Olja, Invisible Flame: The Life Story of an Activist Through the Anti-Colonial Struggle and the Non-Aligned Movement of the African Continent, 2024
• Publication: Curating Useful Knowledge: Non-Aligned Archives – Conversation with Andreja Hribernik and Lina Džuverović. by Jelena Petrovic, GEOGRAPHIES OF BELONGING, Year 3 / Issue 7 / ISSN 2566-4034, 2024
Wienwoche Festival, Panel Discussion “I Would Not Be Your Comrade If I Didn’t Tell You This” With Lina Džuverović, Petra Matić And Goran Musić, The Laboratory for Anti-Imperial Solidarity as part of the artists’ collective doplgenger’s project, September 2025
• Workshop within Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) Research Weeks, University of East Anglia, December 2025

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_GmsqAx...