A bee knocking on my window to invite me for tea on the grass heap
Oh, bees break down all the windows,
boil a big pot
and be.
HARABEL Contemporary inauguratedthe public art installation “bleta” by artist Sislej Xhafa, on July 1st 2021, at the Landfill of Tirana.
This work is the fourth public art oeuvre installed in Tirana through Free Art Project, a project by HARABEL Contemporary Art Platform, following the installation of “The Calligraphy” by Adrian Paci, “EnoughIsEnough” by Alban Muja and “Zâni” by Sadik Spahija.
Through this project HARABEL aims to bring the public closer to contemporary art, through the installation of works of art in public and free spaces, avoiding the door-barrier of galleries or museums, emphasising the belief that art is an educational and formative tool of the individual, grower of intellectual thought, of critical thinking and of imagination, and not only decorative.
“bleta” was installed on top of one of the hills of Tirana’s (Garbage) Landfill, a vast area in the periphery of the city, now underground capsuled and covered in trees and greenery. Now a private property, this area is designed to become in the future an open park. Harabel aims to transform this area into a contemporary art sculpture park, a long-term project that starts with the proposition of bleta by Sislej Xhafa.
Bio of the artist
*Sislej Xhafa (b, in 1970) in Pejë, Kosova. Sislej Xhafa lives and works in New York. He is known for his artistic investigation into the social, economic 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.
Xhafa has exhibited widely including at the Galleria Continua, France and Italy (2012, 2016); ZAC, Palermo (2017); MAXXI Museum, Rome (2016); BWA Sokol Contemporary Art Gallery, Nowy Sacz (2016); François Pinault Foundation, The World Belongs to You, Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Hardau City Park, Y, Zurich; MADRE Museum of Contemporary Art Donna Regina, Still Untitled, Napoli; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Rearview Mirror, Toronto (2011); 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, Ibrido. Genetica delle forme, Milano; DEPO, Indefinite Destinations, Istanbul; MADRE Museum of Contemporary Art Donna Regina, 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); Fondazione Olivetti, Rome (2000), Venice Biennale (1997,1999, 2005, 2013, 2017); Shadow of Curls, Blain Southern, Berlin, DE (2017), Ephemeral installation for Children Action, Parc des Bastions, Geneva, CH, (2017), Infermeria, ZAC, Palermo, IT (2017), Rosa azul, National Fine Arts Museum of Havana, Havana, CU (2018), Demanio Marittimo, Ancona, IT (2018), love you without knowing, National Gallery of Kosovo, Prishtina, XK (2018), J, permanent installation, Nuovo Palazzo Di Giustizia, Florence, IT (2018), ovoid solitude, ArtBasel UNLIMITED, Basel, CH (2019).