Gallery Talk: Dragana Jurišić – ‘The Last Balkan Cowboy’

Dragana Jurišić in conversation with TBG+S Programme Curator Michael Hill on the occasion of her solo exhibition 'The Last Balkan Cowboy'.

Dragana Jurišić works predominantly through the medium of photography, film and installation. Born in former Yugoslavia, she has been living and working in Dublin since 1999. Her new exhibition, The Last Balkan Cowboy, is an outcome of a long-term project that follows the footsteps of cult Yugoslavian film director, Hari Džekson renowned for his interpretation of Wild West genre archetypes. Using local people as his crew and cast, Džekson conjured worlds far from his reality and brought together people of different ethnic backgrounds, whom the Yugoslav Wars would bitterly divide.

Like Džekson, Jurišić is drawn to the symbolism of the Wild West outlaw: a wandering outsider roaming the landscape for opportunity, romance, and adventure, albeit shadowed by the reality of migration, placelessness and the search for home. This exhibition comprises of photographs made across Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia in between researching and filming a feature-length documentary on Džekson directed by Jurišić.

Dragana Jurišić’s work has recently been included in Kutxa Fundazioa Tabakalera, San Sebastián (2025); IMMA, Dublin (2023); Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2022); Zurich Portrait Prize, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (2021); Slavonski Brod (2021); Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2020).