Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina

Artists of Tomorrow Award 2023: Exhibition walkthrough with Renea Begolli, Shkamb Jaka, Arbesa Musa

Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 7:00 p.m.

Venue: Boxing Club, Mark Isaku 8,10000 Prishtina, Republic of Kosovo

Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina is pleased to invite the public to walk through the exhibition Artists of Tomorrow Awards 2023.

The event aims to create space for discussion with the public about the works and artistic practice of the finalist artists of the Artists of Tomorrow Award 2023, their research process, the experience during the process of the exhibition and the connection of the exhibition with other social dimensions.

Announcement of the winner: 02/12/2023, 20:00

The Artists of Tomorrow Award is a unique project which provides young visual artists under the age of 35 the opportunity to produce new artwork, be part of a tailored education process, have meetings and presentations for an international jury of highly acclaimed professionals, have a joint exhibition with the finalists, curated by the curatorial team of Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina, and become part of an artist in residency program in United States to experience New York’s dynamic art scene for a two month residency at Residency Unlimited. Upon their return from the US, they will become part of the annual program of Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina with a solo exhibition that will be hosted at The Boxing Club in Prishtina.

The Artists of Tomorrow Award is part of the Young Visual Artists Awards program - a network of ten similar awards organized throughout Central and Eastern Europe with the intention of supporting the emergence and development of contemporary art and civil society.

Jury members of the Artists of Tomorrow Award 2023 Julieta Aranda, artist, co-founder and editor of e-flux, Berlin, Miljana Dunđerin, artist, director of the private cultural center "Akvarijus", Northern Mitrovica, Agrina Vllasaliu, artist , winner of the Artists of Tomorrow 2022 Award, with engagement in Berlin and Prishtina, Alper Turan, curator and writer, with engagement in New York and Istanbul, and Driton Selmani, artist, Prishtina, has chosen the three finalists of the Artists of Tomorrow 2023, young artists Renea Begolli, Shkamb Jaka, Arbesa Musa.

According to the jury statement for the three finalist artists, Renea Begolli's work pushes painting beyond the comfort of the canvas and uses it to investigate the tensions between the human and the more-than-human worlds that seem to be central to her practice. The layering in her work seems to ask, how can the sky of the future be translated into the present? What are the layers that human techno-scientific exploration tries to add to the natural world? Are the future and heavenly territories that can be controlled and defined by humans?

The artist nominated for the Artists of Tomorrow Award 2023 Renea Begolli (1998) is a visual artist and researcher working in Pristina, Kosovo. Her artwork explores intimacy, gender, memory, isolation, the body, spaces, ecological and social issues, expressed primarily through paintings, digital drawings, installations and video art. In 2021, she graduated in Painting (BA), Faculty of Arts, University of Pristina and Bournemouth University, BA (Hons) in Sociology and Social Anthropology, a semester exchange with Erasmus+. Currency (September-October 2023). Begolli is currently working as a Curatorial Assistant for the Kyiv Biennale, Vienna 2023, as part of the Artist-in-Residence program at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna. From 2020 to 2023, she worked at the Oral History Initiative as a researcher and archivist. In 2022, she also worked as program coordinator and co-curator for Kosovo in the Secondary Archive. As an artist, Renea was part of several group art shows and had a solo show this year titled "Pragu" at Qahili Gallery.

Her works were exhibited in several collective exhibitions: "Pavilion of Visual Arts", Varg e Vi (Gjilan, 2022), "Hybrids in Sight", in Termokiss (Pristina, 2022), "Art during the pandemic: Based on a history of true" at the National Gallery of Kosovo (2021), "Breathe" (FemArt Kosovo, 2021), "New Year, New Artists, New Hopes" at "Europe House" (2021), "Additions" (2020; Pristina) , Mitrovica) curated by Blerta Hoçia, organized by Foundation17, and more.

Shkamb Jaka is an artist who shows a mature and developed pictorial language, which is clearly his own and which floats smoothly between different artistic disciplines. It has a very interesting world of reference, anchored in quantum physics, astrophysics and metaphysics, and tries to provide consistent representations for the phenomena described in them, raising the question of what is representable and how.

The artist nominated for the Artists of Tomorrow Award 2023 Shkamb Jaka was born in Gjakova. He graduated in the department of Fine Arts - Painting (BA and MA) at the University of Pristina. In addition to holding two personal exhibitions, "DisDeKodim" at Menza Ramiz Sadiku, 2020 and "Spooky action at a distance" at Paper Gallery, in 2021, has presented his work in various collective exhibitions. Jaka was a finalist of Artists of Tomorrow Award at the Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art, 2020, a participant in the exhibition "Based on a true story" at the National Gallery of Kosovo, 2021, as well as recently with the presentation of the work at the exhibition " SOLO" at the Narrative Practice Center, 2023. Jaka's main artistic interests range from observing human behavior, to personal experiences, to various scientific theories and experiments. Now his focus is on quantum physics, metaphysics and the creation of utopian places, based on new scientific findings, turning them into visual art.

Arbesa Musa is a multidisciplinary artist of the Kosovar diaspora, who uses the memory of her experience in Kosovo as the main source for her work. She uses everyday materials in subtle ways that allow their evocative and emotional potential to emerge and take over.

The artist nominated for the Artists of Tomorrow Award 2023 Arbesa Musa (1999) lives and works between Switzerland and Kosovo. Musa was born in Geneva and grew up in Ferizaj, Kosovo. She returned to Switzerland in 2017 to continue her artistic journey. From 2017 to today she works in a studio in Geneva with the Swiss artist Stéphane Brunner. During the years of stay in Kosovo, Arbesa took 6 years of painting courses with the Kosovar artist Alaudin Elezi, where she developed different painting techniques such as oil, acrylic, pastel or even academic drawings. Upon her return to Geneva, she studied at the CFP Arts (Centre de Formation Professionelle Arts), where she began working with different media besides painting, such as sculpture, video, writing and sound. In July 2022, Arbesa graduated with a Bachelor in Visual Arts at HEAD (Haute Ecole d'Art et Design), where she worked alongside Caroline Bachmann, Vidya Gastaldon and many others. Currently, she is studying for a Master of Fine Arts at the Kunst Institute, FHNW, Basel.

Arbesa Musa is a multidisciplinary artist and works with different techniques and mediums such as painting, sculpture, sound, performance, text, installation, embroidery, etc. Fragments of everyday life and her experiences as a woman are the main points of her work. Gender roles, traditions, landscapes and memories play a major role in her research. She is also very connected to her homeland and focused on the narration of various themes that marked her life. Topics that can be quite political and provocative. One of the topics that Arbesa has been working with recently is "traditional art" or "craft art", such as embroidery and weaving, which for her represents a dialogue with all the other women who worked with yarn before her and were left out of art history and education. Arbesa tries to build her work based on personal experiences and the popular culture she is surrounded by.

The winner will be awarded with a two-month artist residency program in New York, US, at the Residency Unlimited in the period of April/ May 2023, and a solo exhibition within the annual program of Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina for 2024.

The Artists of Tomorrow Award is a pivotal independent award, organized in cooperation with Residency Unlimited in New York, supported by The Trust for Mutual Understanding in New York.

The Artists of Tomorrow Award is part of the Young Visual Artists Awards program - a network of ten similar awards organized throughout Central and Eastern Europe founded in 1989 in Czechoslovakia by President Vaclav Havel and dissident artists with the intention of supporting the emergence and development of contemporary art and civil society.

The intention of President Havel, Wendy W. Luers, the US organizers and founders was to award young artists with a US residency - that is to expose them to the outside world - and to underscore the role of culture in democratization and civil society. They established an open and transparent annual competition judged by an independent and changing jury without the nepotism and favoritism. This founding mission and programmatic framework - to promote contemporary art, recognize and award artistic excellence, foster cultural exchange, and build capacity of local art NGO’s and civil society – is also a guide for Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina to implement The Artists of Tomorrow Award in Kosovo.

In 2015 Residency Unlimited (RU) became the new host of the Young Visual Artists Awards (YVAA) program in the US.

In September 2015, Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina was tasked to assume leadership of the Artist of Tomorrow Award (AOT) in Kosovo starting with the first cycle in 2016 and with building upon and carrying forward the legacy of the Award.

Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina aims to enhance the potential and influence of The Artists of Tomorrow Award in the general developments in contemporary art in the whole territory of Kosovo.

The main supporters of the Artists of Tomorrow 2023 Award are: Trust for Mutual Understanding (TMU), Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Municipality of Prishtina, Hej Taxi, x-print and DZG. The full list of donors and cooperating partners will be announced in time.