In Pristina, Manifesta, the 14th European touring biennial of contemporary art, draws on Kosovo's past and future through art and architecture. This year's Manifesta, a traveling European biennale known for its fusion of art and urbanism, revolves around "new practices and new models of collective storytelling" with a focus found in Kosovo and its capital, Pristina fertile soil.
Under the Sun - Explaining What Happened,Flaka Haliti, 2022
Manifesta hired Turin-based Carlo Ratti Associati as an "architectural mediator" for urban studies (Manifesta prefers to use the term mediator rather than curator) . One of Ratti's interventions to transform Pristina follows the biennale's 100-day run with the Green Corridor, a pedestrian park dotted with benches and newly planted trees along disused railway tracks. The need for shady, car-free areas becomes apparent as you walk through the city in a heatwave, and the new green promenade will bring cooler summers.
Willing to be the underdog, Lee Bul, Metal Balloon, 2022
Another such intervention is the shopping street to one of Manifesta's main venues, the Grand Hotel Prishtina, with traffic jams from anywhere in the city center, the importance of this location can be seen. On the roof of the hotel, Berlin-based Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj created a simple but poignant piece called When the sun goes away, we paint the sky. This once glamorous hotel has been in decline for decades.Halilajregrouped the five stars on his sign to form a string of glowing stars that shone on the Pristina Grand Hotel and surrounding buildings.
When the sun goes down, we draw the sky, Petrit Halilaj, 2022
Inside the hotel, the main part of the exhibition was installed. Curated by art mediator Catherine Nichols, which presents her vision of storytelling as a tool of regeneration, that means there are plenty of video works on display in the dusty room. Albanian artist Driant Zeneli presents a trilogy of films based on Aesop's fables in which robotic animals explore brutalist utopian architecture in the region, including Pristina The National Library of Kosovo with a work entitled No wise fish could escape without flying, 2019. Amsterdam-based Bosnian artist and activist Selma Selman uses poetic humor to address Roma oppression in her work Mercedes Matrix (2019). Her family made a living collecting and selling scrap metal, one of the most recognizable status symbols in the Balkans and beyond, where the artist and her family dismantled a Mercedes Benz.
Tell me your story, Chiharu Shiota, 2022
Many of the venues outside the hotel are dedicated to works by independent artists and some site-aware installations. The 15th-century Great Hamam, an important cultural site damaged by privatization and failed renovation attempts, was recently repurchased by the city in the hope that it could one day become an exhibition space. Inside, handwritten family stories collected from Kosovo by Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota are woven into a web of intricate red yarn that fills what was once the main steam bath area. place. In Rilindja, a former printing house and publishing house, Turkish sound artist Cevdet Erek pays homage to the building's history as the home of three daily newspapers in Turkish, Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, and as a tech club Used to create a subtly "pop" sound and light device.
Brutal Times, Cevdet Erek, 2022
The Center for Narrative Practice is another permanent building renovation. The 1930s building and its gardens have been completely renovated to house a collection of art, including hand-woven rugs by indigenous artist Jakup Ferri, who has just represented Kosovo at the 59th Venice Biennale. After Manifesta it will remain an arts centre and the Garden Cafe will surely become a favourite meeting place for young creatives in Pristina (over 50% of Kosovo's population is under 30 years old). The space's new name can be read as a reference to the fact that both art and nation-building depend on storytelling, and at this point in Kosovo's young history, it's especially important to hear which voices will produce new worlds.
Schools Without Schools, ETEA, 2022
In addition, Manifesta lists Hertica School House as one of its official venues. In the 1990s, as Kosovar Albanians were barred from all forms of public education, secret schools arose in private homes. Today, the three-story Hertica schoolhouse is dilapidated but still a monument to the country’s storytelling, with video interviews with former students and teachers installed in various classrooms as a living archive. "Here you can see why Kosovo excels in all creative fields," Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said in his opening remarks, promising to dedicate a site in Manifesta to a contemporary art museum. When it opens, it will obviously have no problem filling a museum like this with works that represent local voices.
Your passion for telling stories (gold, blue, green), Dardan Zhegrova
Article Source:艺术与设计
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