Sislej Xhafa

Sislej Xhafa

Sislej Xhafa Axis of Silence 2009; Geneva
Born 1970 (age 44–45)
Peć, SFR Yugoslavia (present-day Kosovo[a])
Nationality American
Known for Contemporary art
Notable work Padiglione Clandestino Albanese (1997); Pleasure our Flower (2000); Again and Again (2000); Y (2011)

Sislej Xhafa (Albanian: Sislej Xhafa, Serbo-Croatian: Сислеј Џафа, Sislej Džafa) (born 1970 in Peć, SFR Yugoslavia (now Kosovo)[a]) is a Kosovar Albanian contemporary artist, based in Brooklyn, New York.

He is represented by Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin and BlainSouthern in the United Kingdom.

Life and works

Xhafa is known for his artistic investigation into social, economical and political realities associated with the various complexities of modern society. He 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 also ironic and subversive, practising indifferently a wide range of media, from sculpture to drawing, and performance to photography.

The social results of economic theories, and the conceptual outcome deriving from complex relations, have long been at the heart of Xhafa's artistic research. It questions the legal status of his place of origin, Kosovo, and he presents 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 Turin, he sets up a temporary job centre which in reality is a type 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

Exhibitions

Elegant Sick Bus at Modern Art Oxford

Xhafa has exhibited widely, including:

Awards

References

    External links