The Republic of Kosovo, one of the world's most recently defined nations. A place that fitfully came into being after years of ethnic conflict and military action. A state that is now immersed in diplomatic negotiations in an attempt to be unanimously recognised by the international community.
Artist Flaka Haliti (b.1982) is representing the European nation with the youngest median age with Speculating On The Blue.
So how does Haliti make sense of Kosovo's past, present and future? And what it does it mean on a more global level?
Haliti's installation is site specific. Like a tiny, land locked nation it is wedged into a tiny space, abutted by countries whose inhabitants have higher average ages and whose sovereignty were recognised much earlier, but often under similar circumstances.
Like a territory that is pockmarked and scarred by the darker sides of politics and violence, her tiny space is reduced to being furnished only with what remains. In this case it's sand, metal and light. Suggestions and remnants of a military zone, of conflict, with terrain that is hard to plow through and a low horizon line that breaks through the remnants of walls and barriers that had been constructed to separate and redefine a setting. Acts that gave new identity to the generation that erected them, but that the artist deconstructs. These are broken remnants of walls, and walls that have gaps in them are useless, meaningless. They can be navigated around, walked through, and can not even hope to successfully contain what sits within them, no matter the effort spent in creating them.
A remarkable highlight at Arsenale this year, and one of my top six there.
Artist Flaka Haliti (b.1982) is representing the European nation with the youngest median age with Speculating On The Blue.
So how does Haliti make sense of Kosovo's past, present and future? And what it does it mean on a more global level?
Haliti's installation is site specific. Like a tiny, land locked nation it is wedged into a tiny space, abutted by countries whose inhabitants have higher average ages and whose sovereignty were recognised much earlier, but often under similar circumstances.
Like a territory that is pockmarked and scarred by the darker sides of politics and violence, her tiny space is reduced to being furnished only with what remains. In this case it's sand, metal and light. Suggestions and remnants of a military zone, of conflict, with terrain that is hard to plow through and a low horizon line that breaks through the remnants of walls and barriers that had been constructed to separate and redefine a setting. Acts that gave new identity to the generation that erected them, but that the artist deconstructs. These are broken remnants of walls, and walls that have gaps in them are useless, meaningless. They can be navigated around, walked through, and can not even hope to successfully contain what sits within them, no matter the effort spent in creating them.
A remarkable highlight at Arsenale this year, and one of my top six there.
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