When I was born, I had no name, surname, nationality, citizenship, gender! I am still that one that was before! Am I!? Unseen wounds cracked my inner skin. Borders paralyzed my wishes. (Qëndresë Deda, excerpt from Monologue, Dialogue, Trialogue)
What Are the Words Doing? is the title of the exhibition and performance by Qëndresë Deda, an artist from Kosovo that currently lives and studies in Ljubljana. In her work, she usually combines different media, from photography, drawings, writing and design, to video, and often puts herself in a role of an object and a subject simultaneously. Although her works appear to be very personal, intimate even, she deals with the phenomena of her immediate surroundings, as she describes it.
Her new work, about to be presented at the 19th International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns, is intertwined with her own personal writings, poetry and graffiti, in which she asks questions concerning identity, freedom and restrictions that are imposed on people in present-day society. Thoughts, sentences and words will appear on the windows of the Gallery at the start of the performance. The artwork will be transformed by the actions of the artist and other performers, who will co-create the meanings, using their bodies and voices. What there will be left afterwards is an echo of past actions, but also an artwork in itself.
The spoken words will fade away, leaving only the written ones. Just like the words we say aloud cease to exist in a form of a sound after spoken (if not recorded), but find ways to leave an impact in realms of invisible; in the minds of listeners. That is why Qëndresë Deda describes the work as sound utopia of a real space inside and outside oneself.
This corresponds with the specific situation of the Night Window Display Gallery Pešak, where one can observe exhibitions only from the outside, while the artworks are closed inside the building. The artist plays between the private, intimate realm of thoughts and public, outer world, situating words on the glass of the window, and creating a link between the two.
Anabel Černohorski
You are invited to the opening performance on 3 March 2018, at 7.30 pm at the Gallery Night Display Pešak.
Qëndresë Deda (1988, Pristina) graduated from Graphic Design at the University of Pristina. Her works have been shown in several solo and group exhibitions in Pristina (L’Espace Culturel Francais; Tetris – Space for Manipulation; Traffic Gallery, Stacion – Centre for Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Kosovo). In 2014, she had an exhibition at KC Tobačna 001 in Ljubljana, where she was a residence artist. In 2015, she had an exhibition at Villa Romana, Florence, also a part of artist-in-residence program. In the same year, her works were part of the 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. She is a two-time finalist of the Artists of tomorrow Award (Stacion – Centre for Contemporary Art, Pristina). Currently, she is a student at the University of Ljubljana, the Academy of Fine Arts and Design – Department of Video and New media.
