In her work, she dissolves the boundaries between architecture, visual arts, and the performing arts, creating exhibitions as spatial installations that are not simply places to look at, but experiences to move through. Text, scenography, light, sound, video, and objects intertwine in her projects to form a single, carefully composed whole.
Monika Bilbija, PhD, studied architecture in Banja Luka, theatre studies in Amsterdam, and the theory of dramatic and audiovisual arts in Belgrade, and completed her PhD in stage design in Novi Sad. She is an Erasmus Mundus scholarship recipient, the author and co-author of numerous exhibitions and cultural projects, as well as the book Film Curatorial Practices: From the Black Box to the Black Box of the White Cube. She is currently completing her second doctoral dissertation, this time in architecture.
Her ability to transform space into narrative is one of the reasons she is a key author behind the multimedia event “Mileva: Decoding”, with which Novi Sad, a UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts, marks 150 years since the birth of Mileva Marić. In one of the largest contemporary exhibition spaces in Serbia — Čeličana, a restored industrial complex in the District — more than one hundred participants from eight countries bring together artistic, scientific, and theoretical perspectives. The program consists of four interconnected segments that, through an interdisciplinary approach, aim to present the complexity of Mileva’s personality to today’s viewer and open space for empathy, understanding, and a contemporary interpretation of her significance.
When you talk about “decoding” Mileva, what was the first code you needed to break in order to approach her not as a myth or symbol, but as a human being?
The first thing I had to do was break that instinctive feeling that I “knew” who Mileva Marić was. People often believe that a handful of fragmentary facts gives them the right to form judgments about someone’s life, character, or motives. Who is who. Who is what. And why. I had to let go of that illusion — the illusion that we “know” someone we have never truly met — and enter the process without preconceptions, without ready-made narratives. Only when I reduced everything to bare facts, stripped of my own and other people’s interpretations, did it become possible to approach her as a person rather than a character shaped by stories told by others. And only then did I arrive at the six key themes upon which the exhibition is built.
The exhibition shapes Mileva’s portrait through six themes, moving away from the narrative of victim or heroine. How did you construct such a nuanced portrayal?
Instead of placing Mileva back into strict biographical frames, the intention was to open a space in which her life could be experienced — as movement through inner and outer thresholds that shape every human being. Every one of us. The starting point of the exhibition, symbolically titled Thresholds, wasn’t the reconstruction of her era, but the effect of time on a person: the pressure of expectations, the weight of decisions, the strength of commitment, the fragility of relationships, the struggle with one’s body, and finally perseverance. In that sense, Mileva is a universal figure: a woman balancing brilliance and social norms, love and work, motherhood and science, dreams and limitations. That is why the exhibition does not seek to reconstruct her biography, but to create a space through which the audience moves — a space shaped by the inner world she carried.
That space is built in the form of a labyrinth — six rooms designed as a topography of emotional states, where walls become metaphors and obstacles become ways of understanding feeling. The walls are intentionally low, only one meter high: visitors see one another and are seen. This exposure reflects vulnerability but also the fact that many of Mileva’s battles were lived under the watchful eyes of others. Moving through the labyrinth requires bending, crawling, squeezing through, climbing—gestures that symbolically reflect the invisible effort behind a life story, the effort that is felt rather than recorded.
In that sense, this is a deeply architectural exhibition in which space becomes the main protagonist alongside Mileva. And that protagonist has its right and its left side. On the right, the exhibition examines what we are given: our bodies, our character, our will. On the left, it confronts the relationships we build throughout life… with parents, children, partners. The final section gathers interdisciplinary voices — psychologists, historians, philosophers, psychotherapists — who help the visitor connect the personal with the universal, the individual with the social. Their interpretations are not judgments, but invitations to reflection.
To what extent do you think Mileva’s story is universal today? Can the contemporary visitor recognize themselves in her choices, fears, or inner conflicts?
My guiding idea in any project is that I am not someone who speaks from authority, nor someone who offers final truths. I begin from myself, but not from knowledge — from emotion. From the question: what can I, as a living, feeling being, recognize, understand, and share with others?
And when I look at Mileva that way — as a person, a human being in the most essential sense — the universality of her story becomes inevitable. We do not share the same circumstances, bodies, characters, experiences, relationships, or choices, but we do share inner processes: doubt, fear, longing, ambition, pressure, loss, the need for recognition, for love, for freedom. On that plane, she is our contemporary.
Visitors may not recognize themselves in her biography, but I’m certain they can — and will — recognize themselves in her struggles. In the tension between expectation and desire. In the fear that whatever you do will never be enough. In injustice that sometimes overwhelms you. In the effort to remain true to yourself in a world that pulls you in every direction. In that sense, Mileva’s story today is not merely historical — it is emotionally universal. A mirror in which anyone can find even a shadow of their own inner experience.
If Mileva could “enter” your exhibition, what do you think she would like most, and what might she challenge?
I think she would appreciate the space and the intention behind it. And the fact that it is not a traditional gallery display. The space was created for her, but also for anyone who might find a part of themselves within it. I believe she would value that. I’m less certain she would agree with all the themes I ultimately chose. Perhaps she would prefer that some remain softer, unspoken, avoided…
Is there an “empty space” in her biography that especially preoccupied you — something that cannot be filled, but can be interpreted?
Yes. There is one absence that constantly preoccupies me: the question of to what extent Mileva contributed to her husband’s work. And not only whether she did, but why it matters to us so much. That question always leads to a larger, more complicated one: what does success actually mean? And how do we measure it? A signature on a scientific paper? Is Mileva’s worth measured by the presence of her name in a footnote of scientific history? Or can success be measured differently — by the fact that she was there, that her work, knowledge, intellect, and presence shaped one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century. That she contributed even when she wasn’t acknowledged. That she carried weight even when it wasn’t seen. Supporting others, even when it means placing yourself second, is a profound act — an act of empathy that stands in complete opposition to narcissism. In that sense, to me, Mileva is deeply successful. Because she achieved the hardest thing: she succeeded as a human being.
When visitors leave the exhibition, what “code” of Mileva’s story do you hope they take with them as a personal key to understanding her life — and their own choices?
I believe the most important thing the audience can take away is introspection and reflection. I will consider the exhibition successful if each person, even for a moment, pauses, breathes, and allows themselves to return to the defining moments of their own life — to the decisions that shaped them, the paths they took, the turning points that redirected them. Not to observe their life from the outside, but to feel it again from within.
If you leave the exhibition with the sense that your steps matter — even when they seem small, invisible, or insignificant — that will be enough.
All of us sometimes find ourselves in hopelessness, in doubt, in fear that nothing we do leaves a trace. But if along the way you manage to touch even one person, and do so while remaining human, true to yourself and your values — your path had meaning. One person is enough. Because we are speaking about one life — and life itself is a world, and it is spectacular, especially in those quiet moments when we touch one another, when we recognize one another.
Those are the moments in which connection, friendship, solidarity, and empathy are born. The reminder that we are not alone, and that meaning often emerges precisely in what we give to each other.
Who was Mileva, truly, in your view?
I don’t believe anyone can say with certainty who Mileva “truly” was. We can approach her, sense her, attempt to understand her, but not confine her to a single sentence.
For me, Mileva is above all a human being. A resilient being full of will, clarity, and courage — like a flower blooming through a crack in concrete. A person who carried both a great gift and a great burden. A woman trying to be a scientist, a mother, a partner, and her own self — in a time when even one of those roles was too much.
In my eyes, she is both exceptional and vulnerable; ambitious and reserved; gentle and unyielding. Someone who wanted much, was capable of much, but lived in a world that could not welcome everything she was. A world simply not ready for her.
And if I had to choose one word, it would be courage — because her life required it. Mileva had courage; she was no coward. And as the saying goes: “Cowardice is the worst of all vices.”
Author: Milana Milovanov
Photography: Private Archive