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Belgrade has seen a creative flowering of urban graffiti, redefining its emerging creative quarter of Savamala and spreading across the city. Moscow-based cultural researcher and facilitator Anya Likalter visited the Serbian capital to sample the street art.

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In 1999, NATO bombed Belgrade, then capital of Yugoslavia. Now, the city is earning a reputation as the 'Berlin of Balkans', with a thriving underground scene and rough but sincere charm. Like other former Eastern block cities, Belgrade abounds with concrete-slab housing, mostly unrestored eclectic nineteenth century facades and standardised apartment blocks.

Photo: Anya Likalter

Klaus Wowereit's description of Berlin as 'poor but sexy' is eroding fast, but it nails Belgrade. And it has what other Eastern European cities don't - the graphic scar of the most brutal military conflict in the recent European history. The preserved ruins of the massive NATO-bombed Yugoslav Defence Ministry, located in the very heart of the city, is a radical artistic gesture in itself. Perhaps, Serbia's biggest challenge today is to interpret its recent history and understand its place in the troubled waters of geopolitics.

Photo: Anya Likalter

The city's walls are an open canvas- Belgrade authorities give a full chance for independent graffiti culture to thrive (with the BELEF - Belgrade Summer Festival of 2008 in Kalemegdan castle). From simple tags to sophisticated murals, an urban explorer finds a portrait of the generation who grew up in the past two decades.

Photo: Anya Likalter

In Savamala, where downtown meets the river Sava, dilapidating buildings have become canvasses. A graffiti work of people locked up inside a Serbian flag displays an impoverished society with uncertain future; a socially desperate crowd bends under the dark blue blocks and scarlet skies.

Photo: Anya Likalter

Another wall canvas is a painful reminder of Munch showing a screaming man drawn in black and white. In 'Savamalaz', a male character stares at a pedestrian with a mouth sewn up with multicolored threads; a young man in Serbian army uniform gives a scary look showing his new brackets. This image has a penetrating energy of anger.

Photo: Anya Likalter

Taking an advantage of architectural context, ARTEZ places his Gothic character in a narrow space between two gridded windows. The Ghosts of Savamala, a female graffiti and design group (Barbara Ismailovi? and Tijana Tripkovi?), are in contrast to this powerful political art. The strangely familiar graceful creatures greet pedestrians as they go from Kalemegdan fortress to the tram stop and Sava waterside.

Photo: Anya Likalter

The friendly ghosts belong to this community - they go fishing, clubbing and boating. Defying history, one ghost is called Tito (post-war communist founder of Yugoslavia). A few metres away from The Ghosts, a group of young artists (Sanja Seliškar, Andela Ceh, Nikola Herman and Petar Ðošev) have marked the asphalt as 'mesto za ljubljenje' or 'kissing area'. This simple flower power gesture manifests a freedom of personal expression in the post-war society.

Photo: Anya Likalter

Downtown Belgrade has attracted graffiti artists from other countries, too. One of them is a French artist Guillaume Alby, known as Remed, who created 'La Santa de Belgrade', based on Serbian medieval icons, including one in particular: Bogorodica Trojerucica (Mother of God of the Three Hands), originally painted for St. John Damascene around the year 717. The icon, believed tomiraculously restore a mutilated hand, has become a new patron of the city.

Photo: Anya Likalter

With no big international art shows on display for decades, street art has been the first art form to break the visual silence.

Photo: Anya Likalter

Photo: Anya Likalter

Photo: Thomas Ødegård