Threats over drawing of a bloodied baby carried out: Hooligans break into exhibition, throw tear gas

The outrage was caused by one of the drawings showing a baby with wide open eyes, in a pool of blood, with an ax lodged in its skull

A group of 15 masked young men wearing black broke into the exhibition space withing the "New Age" festival held at the Stara Kapetanija Art Gallery, threw tear gas and tore up the exhibited works.

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As Marko Somborac, one of the participants in the exhibition, a cartoon group that is the author of the event, said on Twitter, this happened despite the fact that death threats made on social networks had been reported to the police last night.

"The works were torn up and there was tear gas," Somborac wrote.

At the time of the incident an artist on duty and one security guard were present.

He told Nova.rs that they did not threaten her.

"They just burst in, threw tear gas, tore up the works and started to run away. She followed them and tried to explain to them what art is," said the well known comic book artist.

Strong reactions because of one drawing

The exhibition is being held at the Stara Kapetanija venue in Zemun, Belgrade, and after some "dark humor" cartoons were shared online, an avalanche of negative reactions followed, where the authors of the exhibition were referred to as Satanists and received death threats before the incident last night.

The outrage was caused by one of the drawings showing a baby with wide open eyes, in a pool of blood, with an ax lodged in its skull. It was precisely drawing, called "Kenjkavac" ("Crybaby") that provoked strong reactions.

"Kenjkavac - a baby who's very whiny gets an ax in the head," read the caption beneath the image of a newborn with a split head.

This caused an avalanche of negative comments, but there were also those who reminded that conclusions about this work of art should not be made out of context, and that it may be that it, in the most explicit and morbid way, wants to point out that violence against children exists in every, including in our society.

In search of answers, residents of Zemun went to the Gallery, where instead of an explanation they were handed a paper stating that it was the work of the former group "Momci" ("Guys") which produced underground comics and whose works "stylistically brutally show the brutality of the time they were created in, and that was the 1990s," while the caption was "taken from the press at the time."

(Telegraf.rs)