In Belgrade, there is one specific group of murals, with only black and white colours, most often painted in the centre of the city, starting from the Dorćol area and spreading to other Belgrade municipalities and neighbourhoods, mainly in the districts of Vračar, Stari Grad, and Savski Venac. These murals bear the characteristics of the Grobarski Trash Romanism (GTR) and the punk band Grupa JNA (JNA group), oriented towards supporting the sports club Partizan. ‘Grobari’ is the name of Partizan fans. These portraits were initiated by the GTR and JNA group in 2015 and consist of black-and-white murals depicting public figures from Serbia and around the world (actors, athletes, musicians). Persons portrayed often wear a Partizan jersey and feature a quote from the depicted person. The idea behind these murals is to associate cheering (for a sports club) with the values of civic society and the element of pathos authors represent. People in Serbia usually see young men cheering for a football club as hooligans and relate them to violence and destructive behaviour during football games. The collective is trying to challenge that narrative.

In contrast to the depiction of a tough-looking hooded hooligan, where the emphasis is on projecting a sense of masculinity, a significant shift occurs here. This shift is centred around the civic values the subjects embody in these portrayals, moving away from the collective and anti-social themes. However, it is important to note that within the visual language of fans, there are still connections to nationalism, traditionalism, and violence. Through a meticulous selection of individuals who presently serve as distinctive symbols of urban and civic culture, the intention is to engage diverse social groups and individuals. These chosen figures resonate with various communities that might find the previously mentioned fanatical and aggressive hooligan unappealing for multiple reasons. Beyond mere formal considerations, this deliberate selection reflects a different target audience for these portrait messages.

Murals illustrating notable historical figures from Serbian history are pretty common in Belgrade, and a few figures are found more frequently than others. One of those figures is Gavrilo Princip, portrayed in several locations throughout the city. Princip is the Bosnian Serb student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. His image has a political and ideological context, symbolising national pride, revolutionary spirit, the struggle for liberation, and Serbian unity. Alongside the portrait of Princip, one can often find the quote, ‘Our shadows will walk through Vienna, roam the palace, and frighten the gentlemen.’ The quote is believed to stem from Princip’s time in prison in Sarajevo and later Terezín (Theresienstadt- the same town later known for the notorious Nazi concentration camp), where he died in April 1918.

The breakup of Yugoslavia and the wars that followed it have been devastating for Serbia and the neighbouring countries. As a result of harmful politics during and after the wars, certain personalities are celebrated as war heroes even though their actions encompassed heinous atrocities and resulted in convictions. A mural featuring Ratko Mladić, leader of the Army of Republika Srpska in the 1990s, is located at the corner of Njegoševa and Alekse Nenadovića Street in Belgrade. This mural depicts Mladić in a military uniform, saluting with a distant gaze away from the viewer and alongside him are the words ‘General, we thank your mother.’ [2] This mural appeared in July 2021, about one month after rejecting Mladić’s appeal against his war crimes convictions in 2017. The author – or authors – of the mural remains unknown. Residents of the building on which it appeared tried but failed to get municipal utility companies to erase it. [3] Since its creation, the mural has gained significant media attention and sparked protests from civic activists.  Each time the mural was damaged, a group of anonymous young men repaired it within 24 hours, sometimes even within a few hours on the same day. Civil activists threw eggs at the mural of Mladić on November 13, 2021. Serbian police banned activists from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a Belgrade-based NGO, from holding a public gathering to paint over the mural. [4] The protest that ensued was not the first one, but it was the first time opponents of the mural had publicly voiced their opposition. In contrast, prior interventions around the mural had been anonymous. After this incident, stencils featuring Ratko Mladić’s image and the message ‘Ratko Mladić, war hero’ appeared all over Belgrade. It is important to note that this is not the only mural of Ratko Mladić in Belgrade but is the most controversial one.

After the recent school shooting on May 3, 2023, in Belgrade, Mladić’s mural was painted over with white paint with the Partizan supporters’ message ‘Turn on your brain, turn off Pink’ with the TV Pink logo crossed out. TV Pink is one of the biggest supporters of the current regime. This television is known for cultivating offensive rhetoric, giving the platform to mobsters, war criminals and bullies. Additionally, they have been linked to the rise of violence many believe resulted in the school shooting. The mural included the insignia of a Partizan supporter group believed to have ties with the authorities. [5] 

The mural is flanked on one side by a similar mural of the leader of the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, Dragoljub ‘Draža’ Mihailović, who was convicted of war crimes after WWII, and on the other side with a mural of WWI Serbian Army Field Marshal Živojin Mišić. All three murals include the coat of arms of the Partizan fan club. [6] Draža Mihailović murals are common in Belgrade but have rarely sparked controversies. However, after the school shooting in Belgrade, many were partly demolished and painted over with red paint.

Belgrade has become a collection of symbols representing the struggle and confrontation of ideologies between two groups of people, anonymous and quarrelling through the city’s facades. If the city is perceived as a discourse, the ‘vocabulary’ of individuals is often not shaped spontaneously but is significantly influenced by the identity politics of different social groups. The urban space is often perceived as a stage for inscribing representations of the past and public manifestations of collective memories. Mechanisms of power almost always condition collective memory in contemporary societies, and unlike individual memory, it is usually regulated and ideologically formed. This phenomenon, which is part of our everyday life, echoes the conclusion of sociologist Todor Kuljić that ‘contemporary memory culture is bureaucratically and commercially organised and politically instrumentalised history. Coherent pasts are invented, decreed, and used for entertainment.’

The content of the official or dominant ideologies promoted in a society largely depends on the top of the social and political elite and how actors in lower positions implement them. The construction of the urban text depends on the ruling ideologies in a particular society but is carried out by various social actors with diverse capacities of power and influence. These specific actors, in cases of memorialisation of public space, can be referred to as ‘memorial entrepreneurs’ –  individuals engaged in specific transformative actions aimed at achieving a certain result, which, in the case of implementing a memorial agenda, would be the creation of memorial sites in public space.

For more on street art in Belgrade, see this post on the Beotura website.

All photographs are from the author.

About the Author:

Hana Šuica recently completed her master’s degree in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Singidunum University in Belgrade. Her master’s thesis dealt with murals as a form of funerary art and a symbol of contemporary commemorative culture. She is currently working on a personal project for which she is collecting and cataloguing murals across Belgrade and Serbia, researching the stories behind funerary portraits. She hopes to start working as a PhD researcher to continue her study of funerary murals.

End Notes:

[1]  Partizan Football Club is a Serbian professional football club based in Belgrade. It forms a major part of the Partizan multi-sport club.

[2]  Nevena Bogdanovic, Predrag Urosevic, Andy Heil, “Graffiti War: Battle In The Streets Over Ratko Mladic Mural”, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, November 10, 2021. https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-mladic-mural-protests/31555357.html.

[3] Milica Stojanovic, “Serbian Activist Tried for Defacing Ratko Mladic Mural”, Balkan Insight, March 22, 2022. https://balkaninsight.com/2022/03/22/serbian-activist-tried-for-defacing-ratko-mladic-mural.

[4] Milica Stojanovic, “Serbian Activist Tried for Defacing Ratko Mladic Mural”, Balkan Insight, March 22, 2022. https://balkaninsight.com/2022/03/22/serbian-activist-tried-for-defacing-ratko-mladic-mural.

[5] N1 Belgrade, “Anti-Pink TV message painted over Mladic mural”, N1, May 12, 2023. https://n1info.rs/english/news/anti-pink-tv-message-painted-over-mladic-mural/.

[6] N1 Belgrade, “Anti-Pink TV message painted over Mladic mural”, N1, May 12, 2023. https://n1info.rs/english/news/anti-pink-tv-message-painted-over-mladic-mural/.

[7] Tudor Kuljić, Kultura sećanja: Teorijska objašnjenja upotrebe prošlosti (Belgrade: Čigoja, 2006).

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Artists across the world have drawn their own meanings from the killing of George Floyd, and expressed their conclusions in their own ways. Sometimes, such meaning lies in a mural’s location: George Floyd’s face painted on a separation wall in the West Bank sends its own message. Sometimes it is the image’s content that forces us to focus on a particular aspect of Floyd’s death – his humanity, the visceral horror of the act, or the political structures that  facilitated it. 

The mural you see here on the ‘International Wall’ on the Falls Road in Belfast can be divided into three parts. In the first, you see the assailant Derek Chauvin, donning a MAGA hat, snarling at the viewer as he kneels on Floyd’s neck. Second, George Floyd’s face – enlarged, isolated – looks out of the canvas. His expression is indiscernible. His face does not express sadness, nor rage, nor fear. It is as though he is waiting for us to decide how we mourn him. He dominates the mural. Third, and perhaps most telling of all, three policemen stand aside. One covers his eyes, another his ears, another his mouth. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. 

The ‘International Wall’ is covered in an ever-shifting mosaic of Republican homages to foreign heroes and causes, from Palestinians, to Kurdish fighters, to the West Papuan independence movement. Placing the mural of George Floyd here places it at the centre of a contested narrative over antiracism and its relation to political conflict in Northern Ireland. Moreover, the role of a mural in itself has deep historic resonance as a way of representing the concerns of Unionist and Republican communities authentically. The sixth Contested Histories Occasional Paper covers the history of murals and muralling in Northern Irish cities in greater detail, and explains how murals have traced the contours of conflict and reconciliation since its foundation. 

The Republican and Unionist contestation has several dimensions, and though the emphasis is often placed on religion, the two communities are also divided by political ideology. Left-wing theory and activist practice are hugely influential in Republican circles, whereas most Unionists have adopted conservatism as a working ideological approach. That the former has pushed for more radical change to policing and race relations in general since Floyd’s death would inevitably expose that political divide.  

But besides this general division, Northern Ireland has its own distinct relationship with antiracism as a global movement. During the 1960s, the American Civil Rights movement for African American equality was an inspiration for Catholics in Northern Ireland, who consequently demanded equal rights in employment, housing and security. Many historic concerns of these two communities appear to align, most significant of which is a historic distrust of law enforcement. 

Claiming to reflect the historical legacy of conflict in Northern Ireland is a fraught and highly contested business. Republican activists and politicians were keen to emphasise ‘solidarity’ with the Black Lives Matter movement and, indeed, to draw the two struggles together. Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister and Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, was explicit in this: “Whether in Ireland or the US, an injustice to one is an injustice to all. Racism must be eradicated” (via Twitter on June 2nd 2020). 

Not everyone accepts this characterisation. Kenny Donaldson, who chairs a group advocating for victims of the Troubles, said in aftermath of Floyd’s death: “Why are local people justifiably horrified by George’s murder not also horrified by the brutal actions of terrorists in Northern Ireland who often tortured their victims before stealing away their lives, and often within the glare of wider public view?” 

George Floyd’s death and the resurgent movement for racial equality has forced crises of self-consciousness across the Western world. How can a country learn to condemn unjust or oppressive episodes in its past? In an important sense, Northern Ireland is home to two divergent national imaginations. Whether gradual reconciliation can be reached over time remains an open question. In grief, latent divisions continue to peek through the cracks.

Originally published by EuroClio News on 26 March 2021.

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Oftentimes, the Contested Histories Team encounters statues embroiled in conflict, which can result in destruction or removal of a monument. The public debates over images of Cecil Rhodes or the watery ending that met the Colston statue in Bristol, England are two memorable examples. In stark contrast, the case of the Sir Stamford Raffles statue in Singapore presents an absence of contestation that offers an innovative way to simultaneously preserve and contextualize history in the public space. Despite its associations with colonialism, the Raffles statue attracts very little controversy. This case study provides a unique opportunity to examine the role of States in shaping narratives and underscores the positive power of public space to spark thoughtful dialogue.

The white polymarble statue of Raffles occupies a very public and central location, along the banks of the Singapore River where Raffles allegedly stepped ashore in 1819. Thousands of tourists pass by the statue daily where it stands against a backdrop of the sleek Singapore skyline. The statue was intentionally installed in this iconic spot for the 1919 Centennial celebration of Singapore’s founding. Today’s statue is a 1972 replica of the bronze original, with a plaque that celebrates Raffles’ ‘genius and perception [that] changed the destiny of Singapore from an obscure fishing village to a great seaport and modern metropolis’. This complimentary and curated historical narrative, which paints the colonial period as ‘ineffectual’ rather than cruel, helped facilitate Singapore’s transition into independent statehood.

Modern Singaporean history begins with Sir Stamford Raffles; his arrival to the Southeast Asian city state brought Singapore under the British Imperial umbrella in 1819. Today, Singapore openly acknowledges both the benefits and detriments of its colonial legacy, celebrating its independence from colonialism while also attributing modern Singaporean institutions, like the rule of law, to British influence. This 1819 origin story was not an accident; Singaporean officials deliberately centered Raffles at the beginning of Singapore’s modern history. As the country embraced independence in 1959, public officials sought to craft a historical origin story that achieved two goals. First, they did not want to elevate any single ethnic group over the others. Although British colonial structures reinforced racial stereotypes in Singapore in many ways, pinning modern Singapore’s inception on Raffles’ arrival allowed the state to celebrate the diversification and globalization of Singaporean society. Officials also wanted to send the message that Singapore was still open for business. Investors were wary of the new socialist republic, and Singapore wanted to emphasize its connection to the past in order to reinforce relationships moving into the future. Thus, Raffles became a household name in Singapore and 1819 became a date to remember in history class.

Singapore decided to use the 2019 Bicentennial as an opportunity to revisit the Raffles statue in a new, contextualized way. A committee of government ministers, an advisory panel composed of civilians, and over 300 partner organizations contributed to planning the Bicentennial event. As a teaser for the upcoming celebration, artists painted the front side of the Raffles statue a dark gray so that when onlookers observed the statue head-on, it blended into the industrial steel building behind it. Raffles being indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape was meant to spark reflection and broaden people’s understanding of Singaporean history beyond the role of a single man. Once the Bicentennial truly got underway, officials added 4 additional statues beside Raffles, each honoring a key historical figure in Singapore. Together the 5 statues are meant to represent the multiculturalism behind Singapore’s founding and reflect the diversity of modern Singaporean society. Free exhibitions exploring Singapore’s history and the colonial period also called on the public to ask questions and consider a deeper understanding of Singapore’s origins. One exhibition helped visitors explore Singapore’s pre-1819 history, starting at 1299. The second exhibition offered a multidimensional analysis of Raffles, investigating the authenticity of his historical contributions while also acknowledging his imperialist role. Some wished the exhibition had done more to critically frame Raffles within Singapore’s history.

However, this use of public art and public space created access for Singaporeans to reflect on the 200 years of history since Raffles’ landing. Singaporean officials chose to contextualize Raffles by adding monuments to the public space that commemorated the achievements of other local communities. By visually transforming the Raffles statue to make a familiar monument unfamiliar, it became dynamic. Officials leveraged the public space to elicit curiosity about Raffles’ role in history and challenged passersby to take a second look. The Singapore case provides a unique opportunity to explore the absence of contestation and the active role that the state can play in narrative formation, contextualization, and public debate.

Originally published via EuroClio News on 27 July 2020.

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