Curator: Tevž Logar
Artists: Jošt Franko, Blerta Hashani, Mila Panić
22/01/2025 – 21/03/2025
Opening: 22/01/2025, 19:00h
Address: St.Henrik Bariç, no.10, Prishtinë, 10000, Republic of Kosovo
The exhibition Perceive, Record, Imagine tries to reflects the aims of Scanning the Region, an exhibition series conceived by Shtatëmbëdhjetë (17), which focuses on examining and preserving the multifaceted histories and identities within the region. The series aims to delve into local narratives often overlooked in broader histories, shining a light on voices affected by displacement, conflict, and erasure.
A region in its dry definition is a designated area that is characterized by specific criteria or features, which may include physical, cultural, economic, or political attributes. However, when we think about a region, we often envision its landscape, as landscapes provide tangible, visible, and physical expressions of a region’s essence, shaping its identity, activities, and meaning. This connection arises from the interdependence of the physical environment, cultural influences, and human interactions within a given space. While regions are often conceptual constructs created for administrative or analytical purposes, landscapes serve as physical evidence of what makes a region distinct.
Thinking about a region through its landscapes grounds abstract ideas in observable reality, also through the prism of art where landscapes are not merely visual records but also reflections of humanity’s interaction with and interpretation of everything that is surrounding us. This is also the main interest of the exhibition Perceive, Record, Imagine that through the perspective of landscape, shows how our perception informs documentation, how recording leads to reinterpretation, and how imagination can reshape the world we perceive. As a motif, landscapes have a deep-rooted tradition of expressing wide range of themes and fulfilling varied purposes.
The intent behind depicting landscapes has shifted across cultures, styles, and periods, with artists frequently using them to communicate personal, social, political, or aesthetic ideas. Notably, landscapes often serve as mediums to uncover stories that have been historically overlooked or suppressed. That is why, today, landscapes hold profound relevance, acting as focal points in various cultural, social, economic, and political discussions, engaging with issues of identity, ownership, environmental concerns, and migration.
Migration is the focal point of the presentation of work by Jošt Franko within the exhibition, whose practice is dealing with concealed, overlooked, and invisible topics. His projects A Memory Without Evidence and Until I Become Home, collaborative newspapers, explore the experiences of communities and individuals navigating the Balkan refugee route. This collaborative and interdisciplinary approach highlights the challenges faced by people on the move and the communities supporting them, shedding light on the long and often perilous journeys undertaken in pursuit of finding a safe space in Europe. If Franko’s practice is focused on working with individuals and the communities on fringes of society, the work of Mila Panić should be seen more as an intimate yet critical narrative that explores the intersections of her personal and collective histories. She frequently addresses issues such as labor, mobility, and the residual effects of capitalism, challenging traditional notions of home and identity. In her piece Burning Field, showcased in this exhibition, Panić she is questioning what is her responsibility towards her heritage and inheritance in the situation of displacement and how our relationship to the landscape often reflects a deep yearning for the land that has shaped our identity—a place we know intimately, that may have once been or still is ours.
A thought intimacy can also relate to the work of Blerta Hashani whose approach offers her intimate perspective on the nature surrounding her, what transcends the mere depiction of scenery, serving as a profound exploration of human connections to nature, memory, and contemplation. Landscapes often convey not just physical geography but also the inner landscapes of the artist’s emotions, perspectives, and subconscious. By blending natural forms, transformations of Hashani’s everyday environment with human emotion, she invites us to engage with both the physical and metaphysical aspects of the world, offering to a spectator a path to imagery that can reshape the world we perceive. That is why her landscapes at the exhibition are not merely representations of geography but become “portals” into memory, contemplation, and imagination.
By engaging with each of the three stories, the exhibition encourages the spectator to reflect on their own ways of observing, preserving, and reimagining their surroundings, creating a dialogue between individual experiences and themes that are “inscribed” in space that surrounds us. In line with Shtatëmbëdhjetë’s mission, also this exhibition functions as both preservation and reinterpretation, highlighting the personal and communal histories that continue to shape the broader cultural and historical mosaic of the region. This is also the reason why Perceive, Record, Imagine should not be read just as a sequence, but rather as a cycle.