Sislej Xhafa
Biografie
*1970 Peja / Albanien, Kosovo, lebt und arbeitet in Bologna und New York Fotografie, Video, Zeichnungen, Installationen, Performances Fokussierung des Phänomens der Illegalen Einwanderung: "Illegal aliens are the power of tomorrow"
1994
Spazio Tempo, Florenz
1997
Biennale Venedig; Gallery of Modern Art, Bologna: "Game"
1998
Jelly Bits, Bologna
1999
Placentia Arte, Piacenza; Atlante, MACS, Sassari
2000
Manifesta 3 Ljubljana
2001
Biennale Istanbul - Italien; Tirana Biennale; Galleria Laura Pecci, Mailand; PS1, New York: "Uniform"; SMAK Museum, Gent
2002
Gwangiu Biennale: Fondazione Teseco, Pisa
2003
Postplatz Dresden - Public Sampler Projektion, Dresden.
2004
OUR HOUSE IS A HOUSE THAT MOVES Skuc Gallery, Ljubljana
2005
Identity&Nomadism Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena
51. Biennale Venedig 2005 Biennale Venedig Skinheads swimming, 2003
Skinheads Swimming is the title of Sislej Xhafa's second solo show at Galleria Laura Pecci. Simultaneously, a Xhafa show called Heavy Metal will be shown at the GAMeC in Bergamo, in the Project Room "Eldorado". The silence of a dry faucet in the middle of an empty space is contrasted by a video projected in the adjacent room. Its images show two skinheads submerged in the cascading waters of the Trevi fountain, Rome's pompous symbol of the dolce vita.
The Xhafa installation is an invitation to explore the contradictions of contemporary society. Stereotypes of prejudice and violence, the skinheads are observed in a completely different aspect of their being. In the first rays of dawn, in the silence of the city that is still asleep, the two young men gracefully enter the water and engage in childish games. This is almost a demonstration of how senseless it would be to try to wash away the "filth" from this part of humanity. Meanwhile, the faucet without water continues to refer us back to the more conventional aspects of an arid, emotionless existence.
Stock exchange,2000
3' 50 Min.
In the midday hustle and bustle of the Ljubljana train station, Xhafa poses as a Wall Street trader. Undetered by the bemused or confused occassional passerby, Xhafa treats the station's itinerary placard as a stock index, urgently gesticulating with pen and paper, announcing the destinations as commodities, and the arrival and departure times as their ever volatile prices. Although simple, Xhafa's Fluxus-like performance reveals the complexity of globalization, namely that places do indeed have value. There are winners and losers in the migratory flow of commerce as one country might secure a coveted free trade agreement with the U.S. while another might experience a sharp drop in its Gross National Production as its factories relocate.
Sislej Xhafa auf der Biennale in Venedig
Cuisine One of Kosova's most exciting artists, Sislej Xhafa, will represent Kosova at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
The exhibition in the Kosovar Pavilion will be a personal investigation of themes at the heart of Xhafa's art.
While understanding that contemporary art is in a permanent state of rebellion against deceiving concepts and ideologies, Sislej Xhafa builds up a special strategy to rebel and challenge the modern age society which is attempting to corrupt art by embroiling it under the trail of consumerism and pleasure, and under the control of the god of all gods-profit.
Starting even from his early works, Xhafa uses the prejudiced image of "the other"- the bad one and the weak one, the denizen and wanderer, the foreigner who is perceived as a danger to the safety and wellbeing of westerners. Just like the feminist theoreticians and activists, or other groups fighting for the rights of marginalized ethnic and interest groups, who had used the strategy of twisted concepts to raise awareness on the dominating prejudices in their respective societies, even in countries that are considered more democratic and advanced (the prejudices of the machoism, racism, etc), so has the image of the Albanian immigrant (and also Arab and African) in Italy and wider in Europe, been prejudiced as a creature with criminal predispositions-a bad person, a thief, a rapist, backward, perturbing etc. Xhafa uses these prejudiced images to challenge and aggravate racist concepts-concepts for which the majority is not so conscious about.
The heroes in Sisli's works are "negative" individuals-thieves, huligans, criminals-whom he praises and for whom he raises "statues" for. He addresses these monumental images to those with an impure consciousness on both sides of the isle-to the impervious and arrogant western culture, as well as to the frustrated and indifferent cultures of the east.
In the last decade, Kosovar art was marked by interesting and surprising developments in both of its scenes-scenes separated and isolated from the world for a long period of time. In Kosova, a new generation of artists has emerged that strongly challenges not only the local art scene but the international one as well. These "proletarians of contemporary art", as the critic Edi Muka dubs them, are truly a phenomenon in themselves-a phenomenon of rebels with a cause.
Xhafa and his generation hammer the audiences with images and concepts of a vitality long forgotten or repressed by western conscience.
Marktwert von Xhafa
*1970 Peja / Albanien, Kosovo, lebt und arbeitet in Bologna und New York Fotografie, Video, Zeichnungen, Installationen, Performances Fokussierung des Phänomens der Illegalen Einwanderung: "Illegal aliens are the power of tomorrow"
1994
Spazio Tempo, Florenz
1997
Biennale Venedig; Gallery of Modern Art, Bologna: "Game"
1998
Jelly Bits, Bologna
1999
Placentia Arte, Piacenza; Atlante, MACS, Sassari
2000
Manifesta 3 Ljubljana
2001
Biennale Istanbul - Italien; Tirana Biennale; Galleria Laura Pecci, Mailand; PS1, New York: "Uniform"; SMAK Museum, Gent
2002
Gwangiu Biennale: Fondazione Teseco, Pisa
2003
Postplatz Dresden - Public Sampler Projektion, Dresden.
2004
OUR HOUSE IS A HOUSE THAT MOVES Skuc Gallery, Ljubljana
2005
Identity&Nomadism Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena
51. Biennale Venedig 2005 Biennale Venedig Skinheads swimming, 2003
Skinheads Swimming is the title of Sislej Xhafa's second solo show at Galleria Laura Pecci. Simultaneously, a Xhafa show called Heavy Metal will be shown at the GAMeC in Bergamo, in the Project Room "Eldorado". The silence of a dry faucet in the middle of an empty space is contrasted by a video projected in the adjacent room. Its images show two skinheads submerged in the cascading waters of the Trevi fountain, Rome's pompous symbol of the dolce vita.
The Xhafa installation is an invitation to explore the contradictions of contemporary society. Stereotypes of prejudice and violence, the skinheads are observed in a completely different aspect of their being. In the first rays of dawn, in the silence of the city that is still asleep, the two young men gracefully enter the water and engage in childish games. This is almost a demonstration of how senseless it would be to try to wash away the "filth" from this part of humanity. Meanwhile, the faucet without water continues to refer us back to the more conventional aspects of an arid, emotionless existence.
Stock exchange,2000
3' 50 Min.
In the midday hustle and bustle of the Ljubljana train station, Xhafa poses as a Wall Street trader. Undetered by the bemused or confused occassional passerby, Xhafa treats the station's itinerary placard as a stock index, urgently gesticulating with pen and paper, announcing the destinations as commodities, and the arrival and departure times as their ever volatile prices. Although simple, Xhafa's Fluxus-like performance reveals the complexity of globalization, namely that places do indeed have value. There are winners and losers in the migratory flow of commerce as one country might secure a coveted free trade agreement with the U.S. while another might experience a sharp drop in its Gross National Production as its factories relocate.
Sislej Xhafa auf der Biennale in Venedig
Cuisine One of Kosova's most exciting artists, Sislej Xhafa, will represent Kosova at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
The exhibition in the Kosovar Pavilion will be a personal investigation of themes at the heart of Xhafa's art.
While understanding that contemporary art is in a permanent state of rebellion against deceiving concepts and ideologies, Sislej Xhafa builds up a special strategy to rebel and challenge the modern age society which is attempting to corrupt art by embroiling it under the trail of consumerism and pleasure, and under the control of the god of all gods-profit.
Starting even from his early works, Xhafa uses the prejudiced image of "the other"- the bad one and the weak one, the denizen and wanderer, the foreigner who is perceived as a danger to the safety and wellbeing of westerners. Just like the feminist theoreticians and activists, or other groups fighting for the rights of marginalized ethnic and interest groups, who had used the strategy of twisted concepts to raise awareness on the dominating prejudices in their respective societies, even in countries that are considered more democratic and advanced (the prejudices of the machoism, racism, etc), so has the image of the Albanian immigrant (and also Arab and African) in Italy and wider in Europe, been prejudiced as a creature with criminal predispositions-a bad person, a thief, a rapist, backward, perturbing etc. Xhafa uses these prejudiced images to challenge and aggravate racist concepts-concepts for which the majority is not so conscious about.
The heroes in Sisli's works are "negative" individuals-thieves, huligans, criminals-whom he praises and for whom he raises "statues" for. He addresses these monumental images to those with an impure consciousness on both sides of the isle-to the impervious and arrogant western culture, as well as to the frustrated and indifferent cultures of the east.
In the last decade, Kosovar art was marked by interesting and surprising developments in both of its scenes-scenes separated and isolated from the world for a long period of time. In Kosova, a new generation of artists has emerged that strongly challenges not only the local art scene but the international one as well. These "proletarians of contemporary art", as the critic Edi Muka dubs them, are truly a phenomenon in themselves-a phenomenon of rebels with a cause.
Xhafa and his generation hammer the audiences with images and concepts of a vitality long forgotten or repressed by western conscience.
Marktwert von Xhafa
