Belgrade, a city with a soul, where every street and every person tells their own story. Throughout this city’s history, people have left their mark and influenced its appearance, architecture, gastronomic offer, and the habits of the people of Belgrade. But here’s the thing about being influential: it’s not for everyone. It takes a certain kind of person to stand out in a crowd and be heard. Let’s take a look at some of the men and women who have made their mark on Belgra in a feature column by Duška Jovanić, which is out each month.
ANDREJ JOSIFOVSKI (a.k.a THE PIANIST)
He is Belgrade’s Banksy. A nomadic artist who creates wherever he goes. An architect who cracks the greyness of the city, dressing its streets in the costumes of the spirit of the times.
There is often a set to do and he has to roll up his sleeves. How did the assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture manage to rattle the cage of Belgrade town? Was it just because he believed that freedom of thought, speech and action existed only in the street? Without a doubt, all his works are an expression of rebellion. Despite the nickname he earned as a child attending a music school, The Pianist pushes the boundaries of street art with each new performance. Rebellious since kindergarten, he inherited his displeasure with injustice from his father. Both still believe that honesty is the most valuable ornament of human character. However, luckily for the people of Belgrade, his ideas are stronger and more deadly than moral lessons. After all, with the right technique, that’s all he needs to tattoo the city. It all started when Belgrade was honoured with iconic murals of the greatest figures of our better past and present (from Patriarch Pavle to Novak Djokovic). Then he threw himself into the “Golden Age” series, exhibiting critically acclaimed work with social connotations. The set-up of the luminous phallus was all kinds of shocking, followed by the awareness of the need not to turn a blind eye to environmental problems. The installation that was most talked about was the portrait of TV personality Jovan Memedović, made of 4,000 plastic bottles. The hero of Belgrade streets never sleeps. He continues to paint the city he loves with the painful truth.
MIHAILO ANUŠIĆ
Fashion designer
“I don’t know if I belong to Belgrade, even though Belgrade belongs to me,” says the blue-eyed boy in love with love. His name is Mihailo Anušić, but he has been synonymous with Mihano Momosa since childhood. Artist of life! He discovered fashion thanks to his aunt, a seamstress. When his time came, he inquired with people if they heard of the Mihano Momosa brand.
It sounded familiar to them. Before it all started, he was already famous. Still, he never left Vojvodina. He was born in Zrenjanin, during a more beautiful reality, in which he still lives. Mihailo grew up with the most beautiful love letters written by his parents, which his mother continued to receive even after she left to stay with her boys forever. I met him ten years ago in front of the Esplanada Hotel in Zagreb. We were in a rush to get to the presentation of the fashion guru Miroslava Duma. Several other important Vogue icons had already discovered his dream dresses. Last April, he gathered his thirty “swans” in one place and dressed us in Momosa masterpieces, which literally stopped the Belgrade traffic. None of us would ever want to take off his fabric sculptures, despite all their monumentality. Because his famous feathers are not charged for, and his three-dimensional flower accentuates the waste. Forbes magazine also noticed this, not taking their eyes off the daring women who are not afraid to show the world who they are which is exactly why they dress in Momosa apparel. The boy from the beginning of the story never flew too high, even when Elon Musk’s mother wore his turquoise jacket. His universe is still made up of the MM dream team, friends, dad and brother, and bull terriers Tito and Munja. Love breeds love, he reiterates. Bravo, Maestro!
MILANKA UDOVIČKI
City Legend
The first Serbian woman on the cover of French Vogue… She shamelessly turned her face sideways when the most famous photographer of the 20th century, Helmut Newton, took her picture. Not as a model, but as a fashion designer. With a degree from the Sorbonne, hidden in the pocket of a dress she made herself. She always dressed and behaved oddly. She believed in wearing cowboy boots and short skirts. She smoked a pipe, wore a sailor’s cap and never combed her hair. Mademoiselle Udovički. World traveller and adventurer. A passionate woman who lived life for all of us. A Belgrade woman who, without any regret, refused the Pygmalion-minded Roger Vadim turning her into a new BB. She gambled with Hollywood hottie Cary Grant and watched the charming Yves Montand lose his head over Marilyn Monroe. She liked to spend drunken nights with the debauched Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov. They say she had a harmless love affair with his brother, Andrei Konchalovsky. We all learned from her how not to miss out on anything. When Milanka met Newton for the last time, just a few days before his odd death, they arranged for him to take a family photo for her. Her three sons from three different husbands and two small grandchildren would stand around her in black tuxedos, while she would sit seductively in her favourite bergere chair in just a bikini. She was and remains the mistress of chaos aesthetics. Although she lives in Zemun, she is Belgrade’s greatest icon of freedom. She even turned ageing into conceptual art, proving that miniskirts die last.
MILENA RADULOVIĆ
Actress
Serbian theatre, film and television actress, born in 1995 in Belgrade. From the sixth grade, she was a member of the drama studio, known for its somewhat harsh and spartan attitude towards talent. She loved acting and seemed to feel at home when doing so. The same was true for Belgrade, because of which she could not imagine living in any other city.
When she graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, with the best possible grades, it seemed that her story would be the one of a golden Belgrade girl, fast and energetic in her career and so intelligent and charming in life. She competed in Latin dances, practised tennis and swimming, excelled in skiing and diving. However, deep down, she was growing into a woman in search of a definition of herself. When she realized that she knew very well who she was, she overcame all her fears and publicly shared what she had experienced from her acting teacher behind closed doors. Without losing her composure for a moment, she blurted out that she would be the one to tell the truth first. She revealed the long-hidden secrets of sexual abuse and launched the Serbian #metoo movement. By coincidence, last year she masterfully played the main role in the play of such a symbolic title – “Alice in the Land of Fears”. “I think I changed Belgrade because I managed to show that silence is worse than what we finally manage to say and that if we ‘bare’ ourselves – there is no shame. And then, in the most vulnerable moment, I felt that my Belgrade was on my side”. That’s Milena Radulović.
ZDRAVKO BRKIĆ
Hedonist
At first glance, it becomes immediately clear that this is a ‘professor’ at ‘the College of Hedonism’. It’s not the glasses that give him away. And not even a Cuban cigar, which he may or may not have brought to Belgrade first, but he definitely smoked it in the right place and at the right time. Until then, people feared that the finest tobacco, rolled with great difficulty, would end up on the margin of tackiness. That is why Zdravko Brkić created the concept of the first La Casa del Habano in the region. In addition to cigars, this gastronomic adventurer has an excellent understanding of the best wines, champagne, guerilla tequila and gourmet content of general practice. Being a hedonist par excellence is not only his private matter but also a serious and responsible business, from which he has built a solid CV. What sets this master of his delicious craft, who has worked as a columnist and gastro critic in licensed international and national magazines, apart from other gourmet “big boys” is that Belgrade takes his word for it. Even those people, whom he somewhat annoys with his once arrogant and exclusive attitude, give him credit for teaching the untouchable doctor of style and enjoyment, James Bond, a lesson about the legendary martini. “Stirred, not shaken, Mr Bond”, he threw this line in his movie face and challenged him to a well-deserved duel. I admit that I became his (un)witting victim. I became forever his fan when he served me ladies’ bellini with fresh peach puree on the hood of the car in the middle of the motorway to Niš. Whatever you may think of him, his hedonism strengthens the body. Especially in burdensome times!