Dion Zeqiri and Nina Kuttler
08/10/2024 – 22/11/2024
The participating artists, Nina Kuttler and Dion Zeqiri, have been invited to contribute to various environmental and social issues through an open, educational, and awareness-raising working process. The gallery, open to the public for nearly a month, has served as a working studio, a space for communication and reflection, as well as a laboratory for experimentation and action. As a result, the artists have collaboratively created the exhibition “In the Making III”, which marks the next exhibition under the theme of Queer Ecology.
The exhibition “In the Making III” reveals the importance of collaboration among species in the microcosm to achieve a sustainable balance in the macrocosm. This process challenges traditional concepts of natural hierarchy and promotes a more inclusive ecology. Human beings, as an important component of this macro-organization, often misuse their role in this macro- organization, negatively impacting the ecological system, leading to environmental poverty and insecurity. Roderick Frazier Nash in his book “The rights of Nature” emphasizes that “nature is not an asset; it is a partner with independent rights”. However, the capitalist policies prevalent in many countries transform nature into an “open market” for exploitation, drawing a modern parallel to historical class inequalities and evoking colonialist approaches in the name of exchanging “goodness”. Thus, developing countries are often seen merely as resource to be exploited, while developed countries treat natural wealth as a commodity and an endless resource for use. The works of artists Nina Kuttler and Dion Zeqiri offer deep reflection on these issues.
Nina Kuttler, in her work No Sun No Moon, explores the potentials of fiction to rethink contemporary realities, integrating real-time data gathered from the Hydrometeorological Institute on Kosovo. Through mapping air quality, she glorifies the controlling performance over air and its marketability. In doing so, she examines the capitalist exploitation of air as a natural resource, imagining a dystopian future where clean air is commercialized. She translates this into the Kosovar context, where clean air is harvested from places like Gërmia Park in Prishtina and sold for profit. Meanwhile, her sound installation includes advertisements for bottled air that romanticize nature, emphasizing the importance of awareness regarding the capitalism of nature. In this context, the human body, as a porous entity with its need to breathe, ultimately faces the challenge of survival in an environment where natural resources have become limited and not equally accesible to everyone.
On the other hand, Dion, with his piece Something inside, You were whispering, I didn’t notice. after a research and collaborative process with the Microbiological Institute in Kosovo, has cultivated bacteria and tested the food in his diet, reflecting on the limited access to safe food in a developing country. His reunion with the microorganisms of his body, including probiotics and particularly pathogens, is immortalized in a sculptural installation, challenging norms of social and environmental injustice. Through transparent forms and the play with proportions, he invites us to confront a microscopic world, not as foreign and frightening invaders, but by embracing co-presence as participants in the cycle of life, where the death of one organism marks the beginning of another.
Fitore Isufi Shukriu
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The exhibition “In the Making III” is part of the project Art Space Unlimited, which is co-funded by the European Union. This activity is supported by Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, Goethe Institute and SMART Balkans.
