4th Autostrada Biennale closing on September 9

AUTOSTRADA BIENNALE
“All Images Will Disappear, One Day”

We arrived to the closing week of the 4th Autostrada Biennale, which will conclude in a final celebration on Saturday, September 9, 2023 in the three cities Prizren, Prishtina and Mitrovica.
ERIAC in the frame of the International Cultural Outreach Program, supported the participation of two artists of Roma origin at Autostrada Biennale, Selma Selman (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Bajram Mehmeti (Kosovo).
The projects featured this year respond to the local context and revolve around the themes of collective autobiographies, cultural archives, multidirectional memory, as well as hope and persistence.

Selma Selman raises her voice, screams, shatters, dismantles, extracts. She also works with her family and writes autofiction. Selman, a Roma woman who grew up in Bosnia, makes work that is not about the limits of the physical body or endurance, but rather she is interested in how various narratives of self can be instrumentalized to break up the dysfunctional cultural and political paradigms of her world—that is, what society wants to make of her.

In the small Serbian-Romani village of Lepina, about a half-hour drive from Prishtina, is the studio of the Roma artist Bajram Mehmeti, which he shares with his sister, renowned artist Farija Mehmeti. Mehmeti’s dreamlike paintings present imaginary and concrete landscapes and scenes from around Lepina, based on Roma culture and tradition. The paintings oscillate between images of everyday life and the allure of imaginary places. Views of rivers and skies, homes, animals, people working in the field or participating in other quotidian activities are his main subjects. In Autostrada, they are shown just as he displays them in his small studio: a kaleidoscope of images speaking to us from a working desk.

Autostrada Biennale titled “All Images Will Disappear, One Day” is curated by Joanna Warsza and Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu.

ERIAC conducts the International Cultural Outreach Program 2023 with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office.