“Archive of Todor Vujić” is a collection of symbolic objects and documents. The ongoing research and multimedia project aims to reconstruct the identity and history of Fuzinato’s great-grandfather, who according to family lore fought for the Austro-Hungarian Army (K.u.K) during World War I and never returned. With the only evidence of his existence being oral transmission through generations, the story goes that Todor was conscripted when his son (Fuzinato’s grandfather) was three years old, only to die on the battlefield in the Austrian Alps, before being buried in Tyrol at a grave bearing his name. None of these rumours have ever been verified and there is no material evidence of Todor’s existence.
The multilingual archive depicts the artist’s search for her great-grandfather through video, drawings, photographs and legal documents. Together they become both a visual representation of a family myth and an attempt to confirm the profile of a direct relative. With no record confirming Todor’s identity, the work features an audio recording of Fuzinato’s father recounting their family story, as well as an aggregated reconstruction of how Todor’s face might have looked. There is also video of the artist’s travels tracing her great-grandfather’s presumed movements, along with historical artefacts, maps, depictions of the K.u.K’s Bosnian regiment and a list of its fallen soldiers.
This archive’s objective is to illuminate Fuzinato’s own heritage, while simultaneously exploring the political and historical context of the time in which Todor lived, and its relationship to the changing context of contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. In an effort to understand the concept of personal identity more deeply, “Archive of Todor Vujić” is both a creative endeavour and political act interrogating questions of who history remembers, what our individual roles are in the mechanism of war, and what happens to the people left behind.
Teodor V. Archive exists in digital form, where it is possible to see clips and video work. The whole website is linked to the original documents, and can serve as basis for future research.
Digital form of Archive can be found at web site http://ma.jelenafuzinato.com/