Inspired by her recently published book YU – The Lost Country, and the fact that she will exhibit next year at the Spot Gallery, we set up a number of questions for Dragana Jurišić.
Dragana Jurišićholds B.A. in psychology from University of Rijeka. She graduated documentary photography from University of Wales, Newport, where she obtaind her Ph.D.at the European Centre for Photographic Research.
Sandra Križić Roban: In the last couple of years we have witnessed a surge in the number of publications and research which deal with the former Yugoslavia. While some focus on the legacy of post-war modernism, others on the post-90s period and the social divisions that transpired, there is also a significant number of people who deal with their own families’ histories and their pursuit of identity. I want to know about how you came to do it – why is heritage important to you; what have you found out about yourself during this research, and how did you perceive your family? Did anything change from the things you already knew?
Dragana Jurišić: I am a child of a Serbian mother and a Croatian father, from Slavonski Brod, a border-town with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Until 1990 I was registered as a Yugoslav. Since Croatia proclaimed its independence – I can only register as the ‘Other’. Yugoslavs have been written out of the history. I wondered what happened to 1.5 million Yugoslavs – where have they disappeared. I also wanted to deal with the politics of forced amnesia that many independent states who were once a part of Yugoslavia adopted. My memories and emotions about this lost country were very conflicting. I tried to engage with the meaning of identity. Is identity tied to a nation or a place, or can a person build their own metaphysical home, one that can’t so easily be annihilated and taken away?
