THE CITY OF THE DEAD: Pictures of decedents on the walls, death lurks behind every corner (PHOTO)
- People mourn death and experience it in different ways, so some have the need to express it with a mural
There are more and more murals dedicated to dead people on Novi Sad walls, and some citizens see that as newfangled. After few years of drawing, there almost no blocks in Novi Sad that doesn't have someone painted.
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In most cases, those are the members of the football supporters who were killed either in a mafia groups clash or in conflict between hooligans. However, between murals of dead Red Star fans, Parizan fans, Firm fan, some murals appear to honor artists or late pilots.
- Groups that portray a member, whether they simply died or died in some other way, they want to break away from oblivion in this today's time where everything goes fast and keeps flowing - explains the sociologist 021 Miljana Vorkapic Vicek.
There is often an opinion that marking someone's death in this way is a symbol of primitivism, and that today, there are murals for everybody. There is a thought it is about some kind of a perversion to share someone's death, actually the pain for losing the person, with as many people as possible. However, Vorkapic Vicek said that it is not newfangled, but a phenomena of time.
Visnja Knezevic, from the organisation that does mural "New Point of Culture" (NPC) said that no matter if the murals were painted by fans or artists, it represents the expression of respect and love. As she said. People mourn death and experience it in different ways, so some have the need to express it with a mural.
- Lately we have a trend, when someone famous dies, he gets a mural, as it was with Dragan Nikolic. The one who created it might never met him, or knew him, or talked to him, but he was some kind of an idol. It shows that people at the end are just people, no matter how much the civilization has advanced - explains Visnja.
To paint murals on the facade one needs to get a permit from a building or a house. However, in most cases, they are not reported to the tenants, and it usually happens with the murals of the fan groups who dedicated the murals for their dead members.