Map of Disappearance

ongoing project

The Banat region in northern Serbia has been shaped by migration, depopulation, and its harsh, windswept landscapes. The region is notable for its ‘vodice’ (holy waters)—small chapels built near wells or waters that were considered sacred or healing. This project focuses around the notion of holy waters to create a visual dialogue between memory, history, and imagination, exploring the spirit of the place in an alternative way.These are places that indirectly blend Slavic mythology, folk beliefs, and religious teachings – places associated with the healing properties of saints, as well as folk tales of apparitions of spirits and fairies.

This work is conceived as a whole composed of interconnected fragments— collages, drawings, and photographic records.

Small chapels built above or beside wells or other sources of water numbered up to 400 structures in the area of the Pannonian Lowlands. It is believed that the oldest of these structures existed in a different form among the Southern Slavs, who held the cult of water, and in the 18th century, small chapels began to be built in such places, also known as "vodice" (holy waters) in the region of Banat. They can be found mostly in rural areas of the region of Banat, at the very end of the village areas. What used to be the cult of water merged with the cult of icons, so it is very likely to find an image of a female patron saint inside one of these chapels.

The Territory of Banat and the multiethnic villages of Alibunar and Vladimirovac, which still exist today, as depicted in an 18th-century Austro-Hungarian map and archival material.

Holy waters chapel (vodice) between villages Dobrica and Ilandža, Banat

There was a widely spread folk custom in Banat where, "as the day fades" (at dusk), people would visit this old chapels to make a request, and plants growing near the wells were attributed with prophetic and healing properties. When people gather around these places, various things are offered as gifts according to the orders of the healer: flowers, three small loaves of bread, three coins, three eggs and according to the merciful - wax motifs. There is a strong feeling of the sacred near these structures.

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