Jakup Ferri: The Monumentality of the Everyday

Artist: Jakup Ferri
Curator: Inke Arns
Commissioner: Alisa Gojani Berisha 
Organization: The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Republic of Kosovo

With The Monumentality of the Everyday, Jakup Ferri presents a large-scale site-specific installation displaying paintings, embroideries and carpets. While Ferri’s works can be reminiscent of children’s books, folk art, and so-called outsider art, his real inspiration comes from all kinds of other-worldly microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi, archaea) as seen through an electron microscope. The figurative paintings and embroideries are based on the artist’s (slightly) surreal drawings depicting everyday life involving animals, children, acrobats and utopian architecture. There are poetic interactions between people, creatures and objects, looking at each other and thus creating silent dialogues and suggesting new ways of communication between species. The hand-woven abstract carpets with geometrical patterns, on the other hand, are based on Jip Ferri’s (the artist’s son) avatar designs from the computer game Animal Crossing. Ferri - who for his textile works collaborates with women from Albania, Kosovo, Burkina Faso and Suriname - considers carpet-making and embroidery as techniques of coherence and community building.

Jakup Ferri
Jakup Ferri (1981, Pristina, Kosovo, based in Pristina and Den Haag) is a contemporary artist and professor at Pristina Art Academy. He studied at Pristina Art Academy and Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. In 2003 he received two prestigious awards in Pristina: the Muslim Mulliqi Prize and the Artists of Tomorrow Award. In 2008 he received the Buning Brongers Award in Amsterdam. He has been an artist-in-residence at numerous places, including the International Studio and Curatorial Program New York, Kultur Kontakt Austria. In addition to private collections, his work is also part of the collection of Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest. Ferri’s work has been shown extensively at international (solo and group) exhibitions in museums and galleries, festivals and biennials, including Istanbul Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Cetinje Biennale, Kunsthalle Fridericianum; De Appel Amsterdam; The National Gallery of Kosovo, Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Art, Art Rotterdam, The Centre for Historical Re-enactments, Johannesburg, South Africa, The Horse Hospital, London, De Hallen Haarlem, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin…

Inke Arns
Inke Arns PhD, director of HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany. She has worked internationally as an independent curator and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. After living in Paris (1982–1986) she studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–1996) and in 2004 received her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin. She has curated many exhibitions – at the bauhaus dessau, MG+MSUM Ljubljana, Gallery EXIT Pejë, KW Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, CCA Glasgow, CCA Ujazdowski Castle Warsaw, HMKV Dortmund, La Panacée Montpellier, HKW Berlin, Muzeum Sztuki Lodz, La Gaîté Lyrique Paris, MMOMA Moscow, BOZAR Brussels, NCCA Yekaterinburg, exportdrvo Rijeka, a.o. She is the author of many articles on contemporary art, media art and net culture, and has edited numerous exhibition catalogues and books. In 2021-2022 Visiting Professor at the Münster Art Academy. 2022 Curator of the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo (artist: Jakup Ferri), 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.

Press inquiries
Nadia Fatnassi, International Press Officer, T +33 652 086 908 / nadia@closeencounters.fr
Engjëll Berisha, Local PR, engjellberisha.jr@gmail.com / kosovopavilion59@gmail.com / T +383 49 218 423