UC Davis

Inspector Yoda the Wrinkled (Inspektor Yoda Zgužvani) is an artivist project by Nikola Herman (Nikša), which also included his pug Yoda in creating a street art alter-ego to bring critical commentary and humor to the streets of Belgrade, Serbia, between 2014 and 2018. Their work is closely interwoven with the LGBTQ+ history and street art interventions in the past two decades in Belgrade, and provides an example of locally contextualized and critical appropriation of the concept and term queer (in Serbian, kvar which literally means malfunction). In almost 200 distinct graffiti/visual messages, Inspector Yoda the Wrinkled playfully appropriated vernacular language, often subverting the meaning, and offering an important gender and social critique in the nationalistic and sometimes violent public space of Belgrade during the mid-2010s. It is paramount to look at these interventions in a contextualized and embodied way: as situational artworks which serve as tools of queer place-making. The stenciled little pug with speech balloons Nikša used to tag the city could be interpreted as a sign of resistance and hope in an environment prone to desensitization to violence and general apathy.