| Sislej Xhafa | |
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Sislej Xhafa Axis of Silence 2009; Geneva |
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| Born | 1970 Peja, Kosova |
| Field | sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing and performance |
| Training | Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze |
| Works | Padiglione Clandestino (1997) Again and Again (2000) Ceremonial Crying System PV (2004) Komt (2007) Y (2009-2011) |
Sislej Xhafa (born 1970 in Peja, Kosova, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, present-day Kosovo[1]) is an Kosovo Albanian contemporary artist who lives and works in New York.
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Sislej Xhafa is based in New York and is known for his artistic investigation into the social, economical and political realities associated with the various complexities of modern society. Xhafa has over the years highlighted his artistic work on economic and social themes, political realities, as they interact with the protean variety 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”. Interview of Gilane Tawadros with Sislej Xhafa, catalogue of the exhibition “Transmission Interrupted”, Modern Art Oxford, 2009.
“He is an artist who acts totally and paradoxically in a Duchampian spirit, without sharing his indifference though.”Achile Bonito Oliva, ABO, Dialoghi d’Artista, 2008 SKIRA.
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”. In a square in Torino, he sets up a temporary job centre which in reality is a sort of stage set; in New York, he reflects on the concept of security and stability, and in Manhattan he gets a truck of the 1950s full of young lawyers to go up the main road as they recite aloud the page of the yellow pages under the entry “Lawyers”.
“It’s a politics of interruption, upsetting the configuration of forces determining what is visible and what is not, what forms of speech are understood as discourse and which are only perceptible as noise, who is designated as a speaking subject and who is merely spoken to”. Jacob Proctor, Playing Prisoner’s Dilemma – Iniside the world of Sislej Xhafa in «Bidoun», #11, Summer 2007
Xhafa has exhibited widely including at the François Pinault Foundation The World Belongs to You, Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Hardau City Park Y, Zürich; MADRE Museum of Contemporary Art Donna Reggina Still Untitled, Napoli; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery Rearview Mirror, Toronto; PRISM Misericordia West Hollywood, California; MAXXI Spazio. Dalle collezioni di arte e architettura Roma; Il Museo Privato. La passione per l’arte contemporanea nelle collezioni bergamasche GAMeC Bergamo; Röda Sten 2705 Baci… Göteborg (2010), MART Rovereto; Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Language and Experimentations; PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milano Ibrido. Genetica delle forme; DEPO Indefinite Destinations Istanbul; MADRE Barock, Napoli (2009); Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba; Modern Art Oxford Transmission Interrupted; Biennale of Gwangju, Gwangju, Korea ; MOCAD Museum of Contemporary Art of Detroit Business As Usual; Schirn Kunsthalle All-Inclusive. A Tourist World Frankfurt (2008); Istanbul Museum Of Modern Art Time Present, Time Past, Istanbul; Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art Rethinking Dissent, Göteborg, Sweden; Mori Art Museum All About Laughter Humor in Contemporary art Tokyo (2007); PERFORMA05 performance biennial New York (2005); I Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, Fundación BIACS, La alegria de mis sueños, Monasterio la Cartuja de Santa María de las Cuervas, Sevilla; The Renaissance Society, New Video, New Europe, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, St.Louis; Tate Modern, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks; Fundació ‘la Caixa’ la Sala Montcada, Barcelona; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2004), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2003), Gwangju Biennial, Pause, Gwangju, (2002); Istanbul Biennial, Egofugal, Istanbul; S.M.A.K., Casino, Gent; PS1, Uniform, New York (2001); Manifesta III, Ljubljana, Slovenia, S.M.A.K., Over the Edges, Gent (2000); and the Venice Biennale (1997,1999 & 2005).