"The Time
Has come
That we be seen
Wrapped
In the shadow of Freedom..."
— Ledia Dushi (Change, 1999)
The exhibition, set in the unhewn setting of Grand Hotel Prishtina, explored complexities and contradictions within the struggle for queer freedoms in and from the context of the newly independent state of Kosovo, with a focus on the navigations between visibility-safety, tradition-progress & natal family-chosen kin arising from the soft intimacy between the works of 20 artists from Kosovo, the Balkans, and international artists of color.
Artists: Agha Shahid Ali / Anna Ehrenstein / Arlinda Morina - Liki / Arbër Selmani / Astrit Ismaili / Bashar Murad / Clifford Prince King / Kristiyan Chalakov / Ledia Dushi / Marko Gutić Mižimakov / Nanda Agic / Paola Revenioti / Pédra Costa / Piro Rexhepi / Rah Naqvi / Robert Gabris / Silvi Naçi with Dëshira Maja / The Queer Muslim Project / Uresa Ahmeti / Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT)
Curated by Shaunak Mahbubani
With Assistant Curator Anyla Kabashi
Organized by Sekhmet Institute
Curatorial Advisors Dardan Hoti and Ajete Kërqeli
At Grand Hotel, 6th floor, Pristina, Kosovo
30 Aug - 29 Sept 2024
Installed by: Skender Xhukolli
Production: Izet Čučulj and Dardan Hoti
Photography: Zana Begolli @grid_visualss
Curatorial Note
"Freedom is not a secret. It is a practice" — Alexis Pauline Gumbs
'Wrapped in the Shadow of Freedom' explores queerness and its contemporary complexities in, and from, the location of Kosovo. Thinking through the specific context of the newly independent state, the curatorial process holds questions of freedom as its nucleus—the freedom to look and love as we desire, but also the freedom to exist in multiplicity eschewing the confines of unilinear identities, and to be political agents enacting visions of radical intersectional futures.
While the acronym LGBTQIA+ is a fairly new formulation, it is pertinent at the outset to repeal the opinion that queerness is a modern import. The Balkans have had a long, rich history of gender and sexual fluidity, as highlighted in the late nineteenth century archival photographs collated and contextualized by Piro Rexhepi. Numerous queer ancestors have roamed these lands, some remembered, as we see in photographs from the CEL archive, while others have been made invisible through erasure and colonial epistemological violence. We offer gratitude for their presence, and acknowledge the foundations that have allowed us to build up to this moment. The archive of the sex-worker-led zine Kraximo published by Paola Revenioti in Athens is a testament to the need to learn from such transcestors, not only from its forward-thinking content, but also from the fiercely anarchist self-reliant process through which it was published over 40 years ago.
This gratitude also extends to adjacent movements, such as the feminist struggle and the movement to use the Gheg dialect, two examples of many, both encapsulated here in Ledia Dushi's verse from where the title of the exhibition activates its energies. In this interconnection, we see that we are not alone, the desire for sovereignty, dignity and belonging is bigger than any one of us individually. Intergenerational commissions further honor these legacies, including a new poem by Uresa Ahmeti in direct response to Dushi, reciprocating the negotiation between transformation and rootedness; and Silvi Naçi's collaboration with master qilim weaver Dëshira Maja creating two deeply personal trans*feminist renditions of the Albanian heirloom, spells for intersectional utopias.
Heeding Sylvia Wynter's call for autopoiesis, in which she urges us to reclaim the power of narrating our own stories as a way to institute ourselves as "full and complex beings", this gathering celebrates the auto-narrative impulse. Astrit Ismaili presents an excerpt from a new suit of drawings—a first for the time-based artist—introducing us to the adventures of Siki, an autobiographical character blooming into her identity. Siki reflects a piece of every queer person facing the harsh realities of queerphobic violence that continues to plague communities in Prishtina, and around the world. Nanda Agić narrates her arduous journey of finding acceptance and peace as a trans woman in a series of deftly detailed lithographs, straddling the contradictions of visibility, vulnerability and safety that recur across the exhibition. Va-bene Elikem Fiatsi laments the social and legal violence that is enacted on her community in Ghana, performing a ritual that opens possibilities for rebirth in the face of such despair. Bashar Murad calls to turn spaces of queer kinship such as the dancefloor into sites for practicing resistance, demanding liberation for the people of Palestine, while Agha Shahid Ali echoes this sentiment for those in Kashmir.
[...]
The design of the exhibition, too, is inspired by the energy of these radical assemblies, of street festivals, dancefloors, and protests, where meaning is made in the disorder of bodies coming together, where respectful proximity can be a seed for new friendships rather than the threat of invasion. The placement of works avoids the sanitized aesthetics of European exhibition making, instead proposing a relation of soft intimacy where individuality and collective viewings can both emerge through the tender attention of the viewer-participant. Like the unhewn walls of Grand Hotel, like our queer identities always in flux, there is no start, no completion, and no correct ordering to the constellation of works. This text suggests one frame of connections while spatial arrangements suggest other conversations, public programs in and outside the exhibition space expand it further, all to be layered with your own encounters in creating a deeply personal reading.
In expounding ways to embody fluidity, ambiguity, reciprocity and non-possession, queerness shows its full potential, as orientation, as continued practice. In the words of José Estaban Muñoz, "seeing queerness as horizon rescues and emboldens concepts such as freedom that have been withered by the touch of neoliberal thought and gay assimilationist politics." In meeting each other outside the aspirations of white cis gay ideals, we see ourselves and each other as full and complex beings, able to practice the labour to generatively hold our differences of lineage and experience, to find alignments for joy and dignity, foregrounding the most precarious amongst us. Together, in each fleeting moment that we conjoin the contradictions of these shadows of freedom, we nurture the possibility to revel in the unique contours of our deformed hearts.
— Shaunak Mahbubani
Read the full curatorial text, as well as descriptions of the works in the exhibition booklet.
--
Supported by: Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Kosovo, Swiss Federal Department, Hajde Foundation, Manifesta 14, ifa - Institut Für Auslandsbeziehungen.
Thanks: Foundation 17, The National Gallery of Kosovo, CEL Kosova, Barabar Centre, Termokiss, Art Gallery, TARQ Mumbai, Bubble Pub, forumZFD, Dylberizm, Aulonë Kadriu, Luca Tesei Li Bassi, Hana Halilaj, Blerta Hoçia, Aurela Kadriu, Adrian Berisha.
