Belgrade's Banksys

ONCE upon a time the socialist urban planners of the Serbian capital lured hundreds of thousands of doctors, teachers and civil servants to the concrete suburbs of so-called "New Belgrade" with promises of central heating and the best schools for their children. But in the post-communist years the upkeep of this middle-class Eldorado proved too expensive for a government financing several wars and struggling with economic isolation. New Belgrade became an urban wasteland, populated by hustlers, internal migrants and those who, for lack of money or imagination, simply failed to get out.

But today the descendants of these inhabitants have turned New Belgrade into a giant open-air art gallery, featuring some of the most excitingand most troublingstreet art in south-eastern Europe. The graffiti covering the concrete walls of the suburbs has long graduated from simple tags to elaborate expressions of the mood of a generation that came of age in wartime.

The graffiti crews here are often linked to violent, nationalist football-supporter movements. Some of their work testifies to Serbia's troubled past: monochromatic scrawls pledging loyalty to assorted war-crime suspects are common, as are nationalistic slogans.

But set against these is a new style of image: elaborate, playful and colourful. Some walls feature poetic homage to local landmarks, such as tramline No 7an artery connecting the suburb to the centre of Belgrade. Others depict cult cartoon characters, or eerie lunar landscapes.

There are also reminders of the harsh reality of life in New Belgrade, where drug-dealing and gangsterism is rife. Here and there you see large walls covered with obituary-style black-and-white portraits of young men, accompanied by their names and their years of birth and deathusually separated by around 20 years. Inspired by US gangland! graffit i, these works are the last respects paid by gang members to their fallen brethren.

But another story is being told downtown, across the Sava river, where the crumbling faades of 19th-century bourgeois houses have been turned into canvasses for contemplative stencils.

Belgrade's stencil artists draw from sources as diverse as cyberpunk, French modernist poetry and Ren Magritte. Their messages are similarly diverse: from references to classic Serbian films to criticism of mass media. Many works are surprisingly intimate, dealing with issues such as loneliness, affection or the need for personal integrity in a changing world.

One of the most prolific of these artists, a 22-year old woman calling herself The Queen of Fairies, sees the socially disengaged character of her work as a political statement in its own right. "Politics infiltrates every segment of life in this country. I am creating beauty and gentleness to counterbalance it."

But in opposition to their New Belgrade cousins, some of the downtown crews, such as the prolific YPC, have started to co-operate with graffiti artists from Croatia and Bosnia, as well as western European groups. YPC's leading member, LorTek, tells me that graffiti helps break the isolation in which Serbia has spent the past 20 years. "Belgrade belongs to the worldand the world belongs here," he says.

"Soter," one of Belgrade's most industrious artists, says that for many artists, their work provides a precious creative outlet in an impoverished society that offers few opportunities. "Its therapy," he explains. "You draw a piece or put up a stencil and have a feeling you have at least told the world what you think of it."

But the citys street artists also seem to be restoring some of the underground art tradition on which they used to pride themselves. The Serbian generations who grew up in th! e past t wo decades may be angry; but that anger, as one of the more popular pieces of graffiti points out (see above), could prove to be a gift.