Balkan Trafik Street Art in Brussels
The new street generation from the Balkans is currently experiencing a social, cultural and esthetic boom, giving birth to many new identities and collective representations. Already 7 murals have been produced in collaboration with the City of Brussels, as part of its PARCOURS STREET ART.
2023 – No More Lies (Turkey)
The Balkan geography, where the people living in have a common past that knitted by religious, linguistic, racial and cultural diversity, is a spring meadow filled with flowers. This precious diversity could be best described with endemic, unique colorful flowers blossoming from a single body. That’s why No More Lies collect the endemic flower of each specific country and placed them just next to a yellow Lilium, symbol of Brusselss in his artwork entitled Flora balcanica.
Having begun his artistic career by drawing cartoons, the visual artist form Istanbul, No More Lies, has produced street art since 2010. In his street works that include both stencils reflecting personal clashes and stamps and murals that began as travel journals but also contain social messages, he uses animal images as his main figures. In his self-portraits, he seeks to express the fragility and loneliness of humanity especially via images of animals facing extinction. No More Lies has increasingly focused on subjects such as the environment and the climate in recent years, and conveys in his works the close relationship he has established with bees and animals in his personal life.
More info: https://www.instagram.com/nomoreliesart/
2023 – Fitore (Kosovo)
Fitore Alísdóttir Berisha is a Kosovar activist artist, feminist, who fights against the patriarchal society of Kosovo. She has a very recognizable style, colorful, and tinged with her activism. Fitore also believes in the healing power of art and uses it as therapy. As she says: “The sweetest revolution comes from art, from that bitterness that accumulates inside you”.
More info: https://www.instagram.com/fitore_alisdottir
Haunted tries to depict the effects and consequences of femicide, the pain and sorrow it causes, and how the wrongdoings of the past still haunt us, without letting go. It also shows a need to detach from it and move forward to a better and more compassionate future.
2022 – Ledia Kostandini (Albania)
The mural entitled “Wink” is foreseen as an open window to Tirana, the capital city of Albania.
It is inspired by the Belgian painter, Rene Magritte, and his magical perspective on things.
“A cloudless sky with floating eyes, brings little Dadaist fragments from the city I live in, and suggest a sentiment of optimism and light in the heart of Brussels. Eyes blink and wink to the viewers as a playful sign of affection and solidarity. The blue background recalls the European flag color!! Could those eyes become stars? Stars that stand for different cultures, diverse experiences and historical backgrounds, but at the end they could all be stars”.
2021 – ojoMAGico (Croatia)
ojoMAGico, whose real name is Jadranka Lacković, graduated from the Academy of Applied arts (applied painting) in Rijeka, a city located on the Northern Adriatic coast which is also the largest port in Croatia.
Jadranka is co-founder and leader of ArtMašina, a creative studio for informal learning of art techniques and the promotion of visual culture in everyday life.
Over the last two years, she has been using fishes more dominantly in her work. Fishes know no boundaries, swim freely and therefore are a symbol of freedom.
Indeed, for the mural in Brussels, Jadranka decided to paint herring fishes. Why herrings? Because herrings belong to the group of blue fishes and are related to sardines which are called the “Queen of the Adriatic” by Croatians because it has fed people on the coast for centuries.
“Fish is an indispensable part of our culture but that is exactly what unites us. Because whoever lives by the sea lives for the sea.”
On a side note, ojoMAGico is from Rijeka (Croatia) and her name Jadranka means Adriatic like the Adriatic sea (called Jadransko More in Croatian) 😉
2020 – JANA DANILOVIC (Serbia)
Jana Danilović is a Belgrade-based street artist and muralist, Doctor of Arts degree holder, street-art theorist and co-founder of Rekonstrukcija, Belgrade’s biggest festival of arts on the street.
Actively working on her artistic production in public space as well as her studio work, her murals can be seen on streets of Serbia, Croatia, France, Germany, Montenegro, Bosnia and Greece, her studio work has been displayed on thirteen solo shows and over fifty group exhibitions all over the world. Her work explores the role of an individual in various contexts, using different metaphors to illustrate ideas of freedom, solidarity and emancipation.
2019 – RIKARDO DRUSKIC (Bosnia-Herzegovina)
Rikardo Druškić was born in Zagreb but he has spent nearly his entire life in Sarajevo.
Under the motto “One can only see well with the heart, a reference to the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the artist invites passers-by to look at others through the eyes of a child: without judgment and to open heart. In fact, through its abstraction, colors and shapes, this mural is universal, leaving everyone their own interpretation, whatever their origin, age or gender.
2018 – BOZKO (Bulgaria)
Bozhidar Simeonov, alias BOZKO, is a Bulgarian street artist living and working in Sofia.
Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, BOZKO aims to cover up the sad ugliness of the deprived areas of his city by covering it with works of strange looking but adorable at the same time characters.