Kosovo painter opens solo exhibition in Italy

TIRANA, April 6 – Kosovo painter Sislej Xhafa will open a solo exhibition at the Madre contemporary art museum in Naples, Italy. The exhibition curated by Mario Codognato, scheduled to open on April 21 will run until next September and features some 30 artworks, including newly created ones, gallery officials say.
Sislej Xhafa is known for his artistic investigation into the social, economical and political realities associated with the various complexities of modern society. His investigations, for example, into phenomena of tourism or forced illegality use a minimal language and they are at the same time ironic and subversive, practicing indifferently a wide range of media, from sculpture to drawing, from performance to photography.
“Reality is stronger than art. As an artist I do not want to reflect a reality, but I do want to question it. My social upbringing does not embrace rational linear actions. I approach the world and life with primal instinctive behaviour,” says the artist. The social results of economic theories, and on the whole the conceptual outcome that derives from their complex relations, have been for years at the heart of Sislej Xhafa’s artistic research, that questions the legal status of his country of origin, Kosovo, presenting himself as the Clandestine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; or in the shoes of a broker who does not sell shares but buys and sells the departures and arrivals of trains in the performance “Stock Exchange”.