Life in the New: The Ševa family

“We’ll make this disappear,” Jelena says, quickly interrupted by Bojan: “Then we will eat cake.”

Lunch is finished in the Ševa household, a ritual they share with Bojan Ševa’s father every Sunday.

“Now you will see something unusual,” Jelena Ševa says as Bojan tries to turn down the sound system’s volume, accidentally turning it up. Jelena removes the tablecloth from the modular table. In a matter of minutes, the table, which just seated five people, has been folded like a Transformer car into a compact coffee table.

The living room is the heart of the apartment, their favorite part of the flat. Jelena and Bojan sleep on the sofa because they want their children, 16-year-old Teodora and 14-year-old Mihailo, to have separate bedrooms. “I actually like this space here, although it’s everything; it’s a dining room, it’s a living room, it’s a bedroom,” “And it’s a corridor,” Bojan adds.

He grew up in Blok 38, a few kilometers west, while Jelena grew up in an apartment about 300 meters away, on the opposite side of the same building in Blok 23. Their apartment building alone houses somewhere between 2500 and 3000 people.

They have rented their apartment since 2018 and want to buy something bigger for their children and themselves. “Next door,” Bojan laughs when asked where they’d move. On the other hand, Jelena would like to live in the old town, but “when we look for apartments on the internet, we always look at this area.”

“This apartment is cheap,” she says, “but nothing is cheap for us. Well, everything is expensive for us.” “But we live better than 80% of the Serbian population,” Bojan adds. Jelena is an educated historian and works as a teacher, while Bojan sells home appliances and electronics.

The block’s master plan is drawn up in a diametrically symmetrical pattern, with the Ševa’s apartment building echoing another, the two facing different motorways. Lower residential buildings, schools, kindergartens, and playgrounds separate them.

Blok 23 is an architecturally significant area constructed between 1968 and 1978, so much so that MoMa in New York included blueprints and models of the space in their permanent collection as an example of a pinnacle of residential architecture. Its construction demonstrated the power and progress of the state during a time of rapid industrialization and modernization.

Today, it remains an ambitious mini-city that evenly balances the function as a residential area and a social space consisting of supermarkets, hairdressers, schools, kindergartens, bakeries, and watering holes.

Mihailo has the most spacious room in the apartment, separated from the living room with a movable partition wall. Teodora has a smaller bedroom next to it. When Mihailo isn’t outdoors shooting hoops and playing basketball on the neighborhood court, he works on his chess skills online in his room. “I like how I have to make the best move. It excites me when I find a good one.”

Teodora loves drawing, reading, discovering and rediscovering music. She spends her days in her room drawing and creating characters on her tablet if she doesn’t just hang around in the neighborhood. “There’s this pair of benches close to the tall solitaries where I like to hang out with my boyfriend. It’s really peaceful there,” she smiles.

The eighties ex-Yu band Ekatarina Velika plays from the speakers in the living room. It’s one of Teodora’s favorites. “There are only a few artists that I like that are still alive,” she says. “During the eighties, ex-Yugoslavia and Serbia had great music. It was a privilege to live in Yugoslavia back then,” Jelena adds.

Teodora’s musical interest may have been influenced by her father, who plays guitar and formed a band with four of his neighbors. He met his band members in the courtyard while they were all spending time with their kids. After four years of playing together, they are still going strong.

“I’m not a friendly neighbor,” Jelena chuckles. “Well, no, not that I’m not friendly. I like my privacy, unlike Bojan,” she says. “This is our sixth apartment, and he always makes friends, as you can well notice.” “I’m always good with neighbors,” Bojan interjects and puts a spoonful of cake in his mouth.

A few days later, we find ourselves in a repurposed atomic shelter. This is where Bojan and his band Nisam doš’o (I didn’t come) gather to rehearse every Friday, inviting neighbors as their audience. A thin veil of cigarette smoke fills the hallway while the band sets up their instruments.

The shelter walls are incongruously filled with murals depicting dolphins, both underwater and breaching the surface. Perhaps they are meant to remind us of our underground location or to add a touch of whimsy to the former bomb shelter. Either way, it feels out of place. The murals disappear as the glow of disco lights replaces the ceiling lights.

Bojan and his bandmates launch into their repertoire of cover songs. Their back catalog includes everything from former Yugoslavian hits and underground gems to international favorites. He sings in Serbian and plays acoustic guitar while the band plays along, with him belting out the lyrics at the top of his lungs.

In between songs, the band takes a few sips of Czech Budweiser and Laško from the drink holders on their microphone stands before continuing the gig – the show must go on.

Prints from Life in the New

See the price list for prints from my Life in the New book project here.