Dragana Jurisic
EMERGING VISUAL ARTIST AWARD WINNER 2014
An Arts Council, Wexford Arts Centre and Wexford County Council
Partnership Initiative
Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford County Council and the Arts Council are pleased to announce Dublin-based photographic artist Dragana Jurisic as the recipient of the eighth annual Emerging Visual Artist Award.
EMERGING VISUAL ARTIST AWARD WINNER 2014
An Arts Council, Wexford Arts Centre and Wexford County Council
Partnership Initiative
Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford County Council and the Arts Council are pleased to announce Dublin-based photographic artist Dragana Jurisic as the recipient of the eighth annual Emerging Visual Artist Award.
As a joint initiative between the three organisations, the award’s aim is to recognise and support the development of promising and committed visual artists in Ireland. The winner receives €5,000 to supplement and assist in the production of new work for a solo exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre. As the recipient of the award, Jurisic will create a new body of work throughout the period of January - December 2015, to be exhibited in January 2016.
Jurisic predominantly works in the medium of documentary photography and her work often focuses on the notion of exile and its subsequent effect on memory and identity. Her most recent body of works, ‘YU: The Lost Country’ (2010 – 2013) was originally conceived as ‘a recreation of a homeland that was lost’, that homeland being Yugoslavia, the country in which Jurisic was born and which disintegrated in 1991. Retracing the steps of prolific Anglo-Irish writer, Rebecca West, in her book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Jurisic attempted to ‘re-examine the conflicting emotions and memories of the country that was’, through photography and text, identifying what felt so familiar but yet very distant.
For the exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre, Jurisic will continue her visual research by exploring the statement once uttered by John Keats, ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’. Jurisic’s initial questioning of this will take her to Paris to commence an exploration on L’Inconnue de la Seine, the name given to a young woman whose body was allegedly recovered from the River Seine and whose death mask was cast in a bid to identify her. Her serene and quiet beauty became a muse for artists such as Man Ray, Albert Camus, Anais Nin and many others, who projected imagined identities on this drowned Mona Lisa. According to Jurisic, ‘her image talks about a profound relationship between beauty and artistic endeavour, between ‘worshiping the image’ and the notion of truth’. This exploration will then feed into an extension of her previous work, ‘YU: The Lost Country’, where she will delve into the story of the disappearance of her aunt from rural Yugoslavia in the 1950s, and her subsequent death in Paris in the 1980s.
Dragana Jurisic was born in SlavonskiBrod, Croatia (then Yugoslavia). She is currently based in Dublin, Ireland. She has won a number of awards and exhibited widely both in Ireland and abroad. In 2008, Jurisic completed a Masters in Fine Art at the University of Wales, Newport, receiving a distinction for her work. In 2009, she was selected as an Axis MAstar, “An annual selection of the most promising artist from the UK’s leading MA courses”. In 2014, Jurisic received a Special Recognition from Dorothe Lange & Paul Taylor Award. She has recently obtained a PhD at the European Centre for Photographic Research, Wales.
Jurisic predominantly works in the medium of documentary photography and her work often focuses on the notion of exile and its subsequent effect on memory and identity. Her most recent body of works, ‘YU: The Lost Country’ (2010 – 2013) was originally conceived as ‘a recreation of a homeland that was lost’, that homeland being Yugoslavia, the country in which Jurisic was born and which disintegrated in 1991. Retracing the steps of prolific Anglo-Irish writer, Rebecca West, in her book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Jurisic attempted to ‘re-examine the conflicting emotions and memories of the country that was’, through photography and text, identifying what felt so familiar but yet very distant.
For the exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre, Jurisic will continue her visual research by exploring the statement once uttered by John Keats, ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’. Jurisic’s initial questioning of this will take her to Paris to commence an exploration on L’Inconnue de la Seine, the name given to a young woman whose body was allegedly recovered from the River Seine and whose death mask was cast in a bid to identify her. Her serene and quiet beauty became a muse for artists such as Man Ray, Albert Camus, Anais Nin and many others, who projected imagined identities on this drowned Mona Lisa. According to Jurisic, ‘her image talks about a profound relationship between beauty and artistic endeavour, between ‘worshiping the image’ and the notion of truth’. This exploration will then feed into an extension of her previous work, ‘YU: The Lost Country’, where she will delve into the story of the disappearance of her aunt from rural Yugoslavia in the 1950s, and her subsequent death in Paris in the 1980s.
Dragana Jurisic was born in SlavonskiBrod, Croatia (then Yugoslavia). She is currently based in Dublin, Ireland. She has won a number of awards and exhibited widely both in Ireland and abroad. In 2008, Jurisic completed a Masters in Fine Art at the University of Wales, Newport, receiving a distinction for her work. In 2009, she was selected as an Axis MAstar, “An annual selection of the most promising artist from the UK’s leading MA courses”. In 2014, Jurisic received a Special Recognition from Dorothe Lange & Paul Taylor Award. She has recently obtained a PhD at the European Centre for Photographic Research, Wales.
Images:
Top Image: YU: The Lost Country, installation view - Belfast Exposed , 2013
Bottom Images: Untitled 3 & 4 - YU: The Lost County, C prints, 100 x 100cm, 2013
For further information on the artist or the Emerging Visual Art Award please contact Catherine Bowe, Visual Arts Manager, Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, Wexford on +353 (0)53 91 23764 or email catherine@wexfordartscentre.ie or Philip Knight, Staff Officer, The Arts Department, Wexford County Council, Carricklawn, Wexford on +353 (0)53 9196500 or email eugene.campbell@wexfordcoco.ie.
Top Image: YU: The Lost Country, installation view - Belfast Exposed , 2013
Bottom Images: Untitled 3 & 4 - YU: The Lost County, C prints, 100 x 100cm, 2013
For further information on the artist or the Emerging Visual Art Award please contact Catherine Bowe, Visual Arts Manager, Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, Wexford on +353 (0)53 91 23764 or email catherine@wexfordartscentre.ie or Philip Knight, Staff Officer, The Arts Department, Wexford County Council, Carricklawn, Wexford on +353 (0)53 9196500 or email eugene.campbell@wexfordcoco.ie.
