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DATE: 22ND JULY 2009

At the moment when Belgrade is facing a lack of exhibiting areas on one side and the development of alternative forms of expression through street art of the younger generations of artists, we believe that the Belgrade Summer Festival can serve as a platform for researching the potential of pictures in public areas.

The city's visual culture has aggressively been occupied by commercial messages and the initiative for painting murals should present a counter action with the goal of defending the city's visual identity, but also educating and expending the new potential audience for contemporary art. Mural as a technique has in many ways been neglected in the dominant course of contemporary Serbian art production, while in the smaller format it is noting progress within the street art scene which we have tried to bring closer to the Belgrade public during last year's Festival. These young artists find expression, inspiration, and role models among artists from the highly developed international scene who have accomplished considerable outer-institutional and than institutional success during the last ten years. Some of the most important representatives of this scene have been invited to be guests at this year's Festival, among them Blu and Mariusz Waras (M-City). Also, among the invited artists is Valerio Berutti, an Italian artist of the younger generation who will hold an exhibition at the Italian pavilion at Venice's biennale.

As a counterweight to the guests from abroad, several local artists, who have helped the expansion of Serbian contemporary art, will contribute their interpretation and thinking on the theme of pictures in public areas – Vladimir Peric and Biljana Djurdjevic. The murals will be painted in cooperation with Belgrade's three central municipalities – Stari Grad, Savski Venac and Vracar.

Local artists will paint murals during the first half of the Festival, while guests from abroad will paint theirs during the second half.