EXCEPTION
Contemporary art scene of Prishtina
exhibitions / panel discussions / presentations / publications

22.01-05.02.2008 Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad
07.02-15.02.2008 Kontekst gallery, Belgrade

The “Exception” exhibition in Novi Sad and Belgrade is one segment of the production of young artists, women and men from Prishtina, who show their work both locally and internationally, and are formed after the 1999 war, in the time when Kosovo lives away from Serbia. It is a generation of artists which is almost unknown in Serbia. The last exhibition of contemporary artists, today of the middle generation, from Kosovo in Belgrade was held in 1997 (“Përtej”, CZKD) and after that, the Belgrade and Novi Sad audience met artists, theoreticians and cultural workers from Kosovo at sporadically organized presentations. 

The name of the project refers to the exception of this exhibition and the project from the mundane today in Serbia, where one speaks of Kosovo only in the context of territory and status and where Albanians are simply not the topic. It refers to the exception of the Albanian society of the nineties from the system and building a parallel (boycotting the repressive hegemonic system), exception in the future where unreflected past determines both the general and individual views on the world or exception of these artist from Kosovo from the artistic practice of the previous generations.

The exhibition is realised at the time when declaration of independence is expected and prepared in Kosovo, and there are attempts in Serbia to recreate the atmosphere before the Balkan Wars from the beginning of the twentieth century. There are attempts to replace the romantic enthusiasm of yesteryear with the tension-making media pressure regarding the vital importance of Kosovo as the inalienable part of the Republic of Serbia. For many decades the anti-Albanian propaganda in Serbia, which culminated in the eighties, with the emergence of the radical nationalism of Milošević’s politics is still a very important phantasmal field of politics in Serbia. During the past twenty years the communication between Prishtina, Belgrade and Novi Sad was selective and sporadic, and such a level of communication is the consequence of a semi-official program of apartheid conducted by the official Belgrade; conscious self-isolation and boycotting the official institutions of the Republic of Serbia by the Albanian society in Kosovo during the first half of the nineties and radicalisation of the clashes in Kosovo in the second half of the nineties, and practically, secession of Kosovo from Serbia after 1999 upon the establishment of the United Nations control. Although Kosovo has, apart from a small interval during the Second World War, directly or indirectly been a part of Serbia since 1913, the official politics treated Albanians as a foreign body and, in accordance with the racist and cultural-racist stereotypes about Albanians were formed, which were a justification for “ethnic cleansing” during the nineties. When you have this in mind, it is not surprising that society in Serbia today does not know the Albanian culture and society in Kosovo, as it was the case in the past decades. A total blockade of information about the Albanians and partial about the Serbs from Kosovo in everyday media reporting in Serbia creates an unease feeling and it is not appropriate to speak of people who live there, which presents information genocide of a kind.