Vuk Đurić Endo: “The Journey Is Exhausting, but It Feels Right”
Interview Vuk Đurić Endo
# Vuk Đurić Endo: “The Journey Is Exhausting, but It Feels Right”
Vuk Đurić Endo is one of Serbia’s most prominent street artists, having painted in cities across the Balkans, Europe, South America, and Asia, from the Silos in Čačak to a building in Japan. He has held nine solo exhibitions and participated in more than 20 group exhibitions. He works under the pseudonyms Endo, 514.415, and Istok Južni, and his geometric abstractions and *heads* have become highly recognisable. Alongside his artistic practice, he is also the art director of DUK Festival in Čačak, which is responsible for more than 130 murals across the city. We spoke with him about his work, sketchbooks, travels, and DUK Festival.
**Your large-scale murals are dominated by abstraction, which has become your signature style. What inspires you?**
“Šugaman na Stoji” is the title of my latest work. It came about through a series of circumstances. I was supposed to paint the entire building, but the cherry picker couldn’t reach the top, which happens sometimes. So I adapted the composition to the right-hand side and started thinking about the title, because I like to connect my work to something personal.
At that moment, a small child came up and asked me what the work was called. I told him, “This is a towel on Stoja,” because I had spent that day at Stoja beach. Later, someone told me that they call it *šugaman* there, so that became the full title of the work.
I realised that all those shapes, colours, the overall composition, and the palette reflected the atmosphere of Stoja beach: the yellow, the green, and my purple towel.
**So inspiration comes to you while you’re working?**
Sometimes. For example, when I was working in Nikšić, I got the idea while listening to Olivera Marković’s song “Život je lep” (“Life Is Beautiful”), and I added the words “When the night swallows the day.”
The architecture of the building dictated the shapes. I elongated them to make the building appear taller and added the colours of the night: red, purple, and blue. There are stars, too. Everything represents the transition from day to night.
**You also had an exhibition called “Crna kutija” (“Black Box”) in Sarajevo, featuring your sketchbooks. How do you see this part of your artistic practice?**
I feel that this is where I really hit the right note, and that it’s a much more honest form of expression. I put my heart into the rest of my work, too, but there is something more authentic about the sketchbooks and those characters. They belong only to me. I don’t think they are meant to be shared with everyone at this point, and I don’t think it would be appropriate to paint them on murals. The only time I painted that head was in Japan.
They’re a kind of diary. I don’t overthink things when I draw in them; I simply place characters in different life situations.
**You’ve travelled across Asia and South America. How has encountering these cultures influenced your work?**
Travelling is certainly connected to murals and graffiti, but that’s not the only reason I travel. For example, I devote a lot of time to my sketchbooks and write things down.
The inspiration I draw from these journeys is invisible. It’s not as though I’ve suddenly noticed that Inca culture uses red and green, realised how perfectly those colours work together, and then directly incorporated that into my work. I don’t absorb things so literally. Instead, these experiences shape who I am on a broader level and inspire me unconsciously. When I’m there, I create simply for the sake of creating.
**Besides being an artist on the scene, you also have the opportunity to shape it as the art director of DUK Festival. How do you see that responsibility, and how do you choose the artists?**
It’s a huge responsibility, without a doubt. What matters most is the artist as a person. Often, we meet in person or connect through a recommendation, and both the person and their work turn out to be excellent.
In the festival’s early years, I advocated for inviting more artists from Serbia, and later we began bringing in more international artists, too. During the early growth of the street art scene, it’s important to reach the average person who isn’t familiar with muralism. That’s why we always aim for a balance between realism, illustration, and abstraction. This also gives artists working in abstraction the space to express themselves fully.
**How do you see the Balkan street art scene? And how did your festival begin collaborating with Graffiti na Gradele and Fasada?**
I think we’re doing well. Considering the population and geographical size of Serbia, and the Balkans as a whole, the quality of the scene is very high. There are many excellent artists and a strong creative community.
A few years ago, I was invited to Graffiti na Gradele, and that same year we were having an absolutely crazy time in Čačak ourselves. I got to see how they operated as an organisation and realised they faced the same challenges and thought about things in much the same way we did. It was the same with the team in Sarajevo, whom we had known for a long time.
We all share the same vision, and we all need partners. Three years later, we’ve become like family. We’re constantly in touch, wishing each other happy holidays, and that little family just keeps growing.
**One of the distinctive things about painting outdoors is interacting with people. Are there any encounters that have stayed particularly close to your heart?**
Once you’ve chosen a location and a wall, you begin to live there, and that’s a really good feeling. You spend six days in one place, working with your machine, developing your own rituals alongside those of the neighbours and other people around you.
You start talking to people, and eventually you find yourself eating at their homes. My recent experience in Montenegro was incredible. Two grandmothers organised lunch for me every day. One lived upstairs, the other downstairs, so every day I had to eat half a portion at one house and the other half at the other.
**How do you feel about the journey you’ve taken in your career so far?**
I think I’m on the right path. I still have the same creative energy and the same desire to explore new things that I had five years ago. Not once have I felt that my fire has gone out, or thought, “Okay, I’m getting bored with this. Let me go and do something else.”
That desire and enthusiasm will probably lead me to something new. Everything that has happened so far is opening up new possibilities for me, as long as I have the strength to keep going.
The journey is exhausting, but it feels right.
