HER OWN

“documents Jurisic’s attempt to trace the story of her aunt Gordana, a glamorous figure who left rural Yugoslavia in the 1950s and whose subsequent experiences involving false identities and espionage remain mysterious. Jurisic presents her careful, fruitful research in a series of illustrated notebooks that recall WG Sebald’s approach to memoir, history and reflection." (5* review of My Own Exhibition in The Irish Times by Aidan Dunne)

HER OWN weaves together the life stories of three women: the artist’s aunt Gordana, her own and that of L'Inconnue de la Seine – three women, their fates and mind reflections, traumatic and resilience and survival instinct resonating. Alongside them, emerges right before our eyes what is most common still up to this day: the fictionalisation, victimisation and subsequent margninilisation & annihilation of women within the grand and minor historical narrative.

HER OWN attempts the literal somatisation of the wound and at the same time the recovery of a woman and her own right to tell her story. Next to her, the viewer/reader is confronted with an infinite crowd of identities and life stories relegated to the status of the ungraspable/uncanny/unknown, a convenient pretext to have them deprived from their fundamental rights and to whip them off from the face of the earth. (Natasha Christia, January 2023)

First published in 2022 in an edition of 670

Photographs copyright © 2022 Dragana Jurišić Text copyright © 2022 Dragana Jurišić

ISBN: 978-1-8380385-6-4

Designed by Dragana Jurišić and Niall McCormack