“National Identity and Feminist Practices: Perspectives from Kosovo and Turkey” is published

“National Identity and Feminist Practices: Perspectives from Kosovo and Turkey” is published

The National Gallery of Kosovo has published “National Identity and Feminist Practices: Perspectives from Kosovo and Turkey”, edited by Merve Elveren and Erëmirë Krasniqi and published by the National Gallery of Kosovo.

“National Identity and Feminist Practices: Perspectives from Kosovo and Turkey” focuses on selected works by four women artists. Fitore Isufi-Koja and Nurhan Qehaja from Kosovo and Esra Ersen and Hale Tenger from Turkey. The works “Flag” (2005) by Qehaja and “Japan” (2006) by Isufi, by reclaiming the corporeal, negotiate body politics and national identity. “I Know Such People II” (1992) by Tenger and “In Detention” (1995) and the trilogy “A Possible History” (2013-2023) by Ersen — both metaphorically and symbolically — question the consequences of the persistent nationalist discourse that has been at the forefront of propaganda and official history writing in Turkey. In the work of Qehaja and Isufi the body becomes a space to challenge essentialisms and national and transnational imaginaries, while in the work of Tenger and Ersen, the loss of collective memory constructs the central axis. The commissioned texts by Sezgin Boynik, Lara Fresko-Madra, Vjosa Musliu and Onur Yıldız further expand on the references to the social and political contexts of Turkey in the 1990s and Kosovo in the early 2000s, and furthermore explore the complex relationship between the structure of the nation-state and gender hierarchies.

—Merve Elveren and Erëmirë Krasniqi.

You can find the copy online at the National Gallery of Kosovo.