Eliza Hoxha: The City is Everywhere

Commissioner:
Jehona Shyti, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Kosovo Republic

Curator/Exhibitor:
Eliza Hoxha

Eliza Hoxha’s curatorial concept for the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, presents the house as a substitute for the city. In curating the Pavilion, Hoxha revisits the 90s, a time during which Kosovo Albanians were expelled from all state—run institutions and thereby removed from public life. As Yugoslavia began to fall apart, the Milošević’s regime revoked Kosovo’s autonomy. In reply, Kosovo Albanians created a parallel system of public institutions in their private houses in the periphery of the city.

The Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo titled The City is Everywhere, is a house always in the making; unfinished because it always acquires new public functions. The private and public become one and the same. Hoxha, time and again, draws from the experience that Kosovo Albanians had in the 90s, a time when the entire Albanian community shrank into private houses. The house became a public space, a school, a restaurant, a promotional activity space, an office, an art gallery, a hospital and a home at the same time.

Hoxha’s explorations go beyond the dichotomous relationship between open and closed, public and private, personal and social space. Her curatorial stance reflects on how these spaces became a single entity providing freespace in the periphery of the occupied city. The City is Everywhere situates the public in a space populated by satellites and mirrors. They stand for mental freedom, but not for the physical one. Positioned as they are in the Pavilion, they become a physical barrier and spaces of otherness, neither here nor there, free from within but occupied from without.

Collaborators: Ardita Byci (XK), Bora Kelmendi (XK), Dasara Pula (XK), Dea Buza (XK/AL), Donika Luzhnica (AT), Dukagjin Hasimja (XK), Elisa Maxhuni (XK), Erblin Bucaliu (XK), Flakë Zeneli (AT), Gëzim Radoniqi (XK), Gresa Kastrati (AT), Ilir Gjinolli (XK), Ilirjona Haxhiaj (AL), Kruno Ivanisin (HR), Leotrim Fishekgjiu (XK), Lorik Sylejmani (XK), Lulzim Kabashi (HR) and Meral Hallaqi (XK)

Graphic Design: Nita Salihu Hoxha
Photographer: Majlinda Hoxha
Public Relation: Erëmirë Krasniqi
info@kosovapavilion.com

For more information please visit: 
www.kosovapavilion.com

Supporters:
Office of the President of Kosovo
Kosovo Government
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of European Integration
Ministry of Environment and
Spatial Planning