Vuk Ćosić's Poster Campaign Restores Memory of Slovenian Jews Killed by Nazis

Artist Vuk Ćosić (Belgrade, 1966), known for pioneering net.art in the 1990s and 2000s, has plastered the streets of Ljubljana, Slovenia, with a series of posters titled "Undeleted. Reconstructed portraits of deleted fellow citizens of Ljubljana." The project, created in collaboration with poster company Tam-Tam, commemorates Slovenian Jews murdered by the Nazis. Ćosić used Hebrew alphabet letters to construct faces that appear clear from a distance but reveal a texture of pure language up close. For individuals whose photographs are no longer available, the artist employed a method he calls "poetic falsification," reconstructing portraits by mixing images of people with the same first or last name from the same historical period, sourced from the Internet. The posters were placed near the former homes of the depicted individuals. The campaign preceded the installation of Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) by German artist Gunter Demnig—golden bricks set into pavements to commemorate Nazi victims, over 50,000 worldwide—in an event promoted by the Jewish Cultural Center. Ćosić's action aims to "undelete" the memory of those killed and forgotten, using available data and poetic creation to fill gaps in the historical record.