Djerkovic Andrej

Bosnian artist

Andrej Djerkovic is known for the long-term project called «Missing». It was created to commemorate the victims of one of the most tragic events of civil war in Yugoslavia — the bloody massacre in Srebrenica, when 7000-8000 Bosniak Muslims were killed by the Serbian military.

In the «Missing» project, Andrej Djerkovic creates lists of the victims’ names, placing them on the gallery walls in alphabetical order. The names of the victims are written in Braille on white sheets of paper. Through tactile sensations when reading the names, the author shows the conflict between the absence of the bodies of the dead and the desire of Srebrenica women to find their husbands, bury them with honour and touch their gravestones. The white canvases become solemn tombstones, and white starts to symbolize loss and death, while usually associated with something pure and innocent.

The «Missing» project was shown at the «Collegium artisticum» gallery in Sarajevo in 2004. It was also presented in The Hague, Rijeka, Toulouse, Vukovar, Bern, Stuttgart, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Banja Luka, London and Istanbul, where it was selected for «ARS AEVI» Museum of Contemporary Art (Sarajevo) collection. The project «Missing» was also shown at the «8732 did not come» exhibition and won the prize «Annual Ivo Kalina Award» as the best project of contemporary art. In September 2008, the work was shown at the «What is white?» exhibition at «Ada Street Gallery» in London. «Dymchuk Gallery» (Kyiv) exhibited the project in 2017.