Flaka Haliti
The works of Flaka Haliti take shape as installations, videos and photographs that revisit situations stemming from historical traditions. While her oeuvre tackles uneasy questions about social inequality, it does so for the most part with an ironic twist. Aspects of migration permeate many of the artist’s projects, in which normative elements of conservative politics are brought to the fore. While living in Frankfurt, the artist sought to challenge elements that are traditional in a Western context—and came up with a variety of interventionist works. In her sound installation “Ex-Spatium,”
she dealt with the different languages of expats living in the city, questioning various notions of labor as they relate both to those who came to work in the city due to its status as one of Europe’s financial capitals and to those who moved there due to other migrant reasons. In doing so, she pointed out an expat network that grants access to certain events—but only upon payment of a membership fee. This gave rise to questions about the inclusion and exclusion of non-nationals. Subsequently, Haliti developed the project “Artist Immunity” as published in the blog Frankfurter Gemeine Zeitung. This project advocated giving legally immune status to artists, for while many of them cross borders as often as diplomats do, the procedures for obtaining access to the countries in question, let alone residence permits, are far from easy or comfortable. The latter circumstance can also be viewed as a central factor behind the artist’s approach. Haliti’s works, informed by the precarious conditions in which many people find themselves on a daily basis, confront viewers with an uneasiness that triggers questions about personal identities that go beyond a mere national framework. The architectural sites of her interventions are of equal importance, hinting at the specific conditions present in the respective social locales. Accordingly, Haliti’s works call for artistic self-empowerment in order to reflect on the necessities of political engagement via a visual vocabulary. W.S.
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