Dragana Jurisic

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Dragana Jurisic was born in Slavonski Brod, Croatia (formally Yugoslavia). She is currently based in Dublin, Ireland. In 2008, Dragana completed 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” and shortlisted for the Emerging Visual Artist Award (Ireland).

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Jurisic has won a number of prestigious awards and has exhibited widely both in Ireland and Internationally. Her work is part of the Irish State Art Collection, University of Michigan collection and many private collections.

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In 2015 she presented the acclaimed YU; The Lost Country - a series of photographs from her journey around the former Yugoslavia, retracing the route of an extraordinary expedition made by Anglo Irish writer Rebecca West in 1937 and written about in her acclaimed book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941). The exhibition is accompanied by a book and documentary of the same name. Currently Jurisic is undertaking her PhD research at the European Centre for Photographic Research. In June 2016 Jurisic showed My Own Unknown at the Oliver Sears Gallery, an on-going investigation of female identity, framed against the search for more information about the life of her glamorous and mysterious aunt. Jurisic makes effective use of several different formats, including an installation of books and several light-boxes, where she seems to be metaphorically replaying her aunt’s journey away from her repressive homeland using self-portraiture in a way that evokes the slipperiness of those identities. Hybrid and complex, this exhibition continued to the Rawson Projects Gallery, New York & Centre Culturel Irlandaise, Paris, France.