Authors: Tea Perinčić (PPMHP), Svetozar Nilović (Peek&Poke)
Exhibition set-up designer: Vera Ružić – Kabinet 13
Exhibition organizers: Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral Rijeka and Peek&Poke Rijeka
oppening of the exhibition: Friday 21st October 2022, 7.15 pm at the exhibition area of the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral Rijeka
Duration of the exhibition: 21st October 2022 – 21th May 2023

Childhood is a period in life that we as adults are prone to romanticize, even if it transpired in a very “rough” historical era. Its creators grew up in the “twilight” of Yugoslav socialism, the 1970s and 1980s. We recall being enrolled in the Young Pioneers and participating in volunteer labour projects, jamborees, sham emergency drills and campaigns under slogans such as “Nothing must surprise us” or “We live in peace but prepare as though war will break out tomorrow.” This exhibition halts at the verge of that collapse of our childhood world, which we spent in “great longing” for the material goods from the other side of the “curtain,” for what we had seen in films, magazines, and shop windows in not-so-far-off Trieste. This is an exhibition about children who, on the one hand, were nurtured with Tito’s cult of personality, while on the other were under the influence of West European and American heroes from comics, cartoons and movies.