Art Encounters 2017 Exhibitions:
The Unavowable Community

Flaka Haliti (n. 1982, Pristina) lives and works in Munich. Haliti studied at the University of Prishtina and Städelschule, Frankfurt, and is working towards her PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In 2015, she represented Kosovo at the 56th Venice Biennale. Titled Here – Or Rather There, Is Over There, her first institutional retrospective will open at Kunsthalle Lingen in October 2017.

Selected exhibitions: Its urgency got lost in reverse (while being in constant delay), LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina (2017, solo); Dejima. Concepts of in- and exclusion, GAK-Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2017); tea towels have something to do with tea, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (2016, solo); I Surrender Dear, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2016); My Gravity Slipped Away, S.A.L.T.S., Basel (2016, solo); THE WHALE THAT WAS LIKE A SUBMARINE, Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2016); Favoriten III. Neue Kunst aus München, Kunstbau Lenbachhaus, Munich (2016); Ars Viva Prize exhibition, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Leipzig (2016); Political Populism, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2015); Last Time When I Googled You, You Looked Different, Kosovo National Gallery, Prishtina (2014, solo); I See a Face. Do You See A Face., mumok, Vienna (2014, solo).

Flaka Haliti explores and de-contextualizes the symbols of borders and geographical displacements into powerful visual and spatial abstractions. A class of rebar sculptures based on children’s self-portraits emerge from twenty yellow IKEA bags. These simplified and anonymous figures, symbols of innocence and youth, have been drawn in a school in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, by a group of expatriate children. Each bag is filled with blue sand, an impalpable material that recalls the wide open spaces of sky and sea, while also becoming a metaphor of uprooting, the loss of possession and hope.

Images:

1. Flaka Haliti, Portrait, photo credits: Philipp Nitsche

2. Flaka Haliti, Thendive, Grace, Rishika, Lefa, Kaden, Victoria, Nadia, Leo, Cyril, Mrs. Faye, Malrar, Josias, Ojas, Philip, Ernest, Ziyanda, Ledri, Amadou, Bayanda, Julien, Sochima, Edgar, Daniel, Tshego, Nihal, Oyane, Ms. Dagrou, Anna, Abigail, Quentin (2015-2016), exhibition view, Ars Viva Prize 2016, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Leipzig 2016, installation, metal, sand, plastic, dimensions variable, courtesy of: Flaka Haliti and LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina, photo credits: Wenzel Stählin