“Kosovo Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: An interview with curator Erëmirë Krasniqi

 - What does participation in the Venice Biennale mean to you? 

The history of Kosovo’s participation in the Venice Biennale is brief. In a span of twelve years, Kosovo has been represented successfully through projects that dealt with identity politics, the 1999 Kosovo war, missing persons in Kosovo, and the way these experiences have been mediatized by international media. All these projects have resonated with one another and continue to have a major importance in weaving collective narratives. The 60th edition of the Venice Biennale is an opportunity for a small country like Kosovo to showcase an artist of the younger generation, such as Doruntina Kastrati, whose work discusses the condition of estrangement through investigation of counter-histories, first-person narratives, and experiences of marginalized groups. As a curator, shaping a curatorial project that tries to make visible narratives from the periphery of the skin and communicate from a critically-informed position is of great importance, but also a major thematic shift. This year we do not discuss war, but its aftermath. What happens to women in unregulated economies whose only social capital is the labor that they offer to the market. Placing these issues in a broader global context means a great deal to me, because projects such as these initiate conversations beyond the local context.”