Petrit Halilaj
Kostërrc
2011
pigment print on rag paper
42 x 60 cm
Edition of 10 plus 5 AP
€ 500
Kostërrc (CH), 2011 consists of a hole (600 x 400 x 230 cm high)
made in the Kostërrc hill in Kosovo. This hill is property of
the Halilaj family and the original location of the house where
the artist was born.
The soil taken from the hole is transported to Basel, to nearly
fill the booth at the fair. This “land for sale” relates both
to many personal and intimate questions which are integral to
the artist’s research, as well as to social and cultural
problematics linked to the newborn state of Kosovo and its
migration phenomena (with a particular relation to Switzerland).
The huge effort required to move the soil also becomes a symbol
of the difficulties of migration and integration, of the strong
attachment to a culture which may become a self-detriment when
preserved in another culture. With the gesture of bringing a
piece of Kosovo to Switzerland, a country where one of the
larger foreign community is actually from Kosovo, the artist not
only tries to move its land into other surroundings – following
the dream of many of its inhabitants – but he also brings the
Kosovo community in Switzerland a little piece of their land.
The process shows all the difficulties related to migration, and
the near-impossibility of preserving an integrity from one
context to another.
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