The Journeys of Valbona Zherka
Our podcast guest was Vesa Sahatçiu, an art curator who lived in Kosova, New Zealand, UK and US. Here's her most recent curatorial text.
Valbona Zherka’s oeuvre is characterized by a twofold artistic development; one thematic, while the other, formal, and stylistic. It is the stories, events, and occurrences that have encapsulated her life, and those of her society, that have informed Zherka’s work thematically. Her art is inescapably linked to the events of her community, an active reflection of what has occurred around her culturally, socially, and politically.
This exhibition presents a selection of works by Zherka from periods: “Towers” (1978-ongoing), “They” (1980s—ongoing), and “Journeys” (1999—2023), that explore her stylistic development over time, delving specifically into her work as process; an approach, that in many ways defines her work (both painting, and tapestry), and renders her work to be meditative, and ritualistic. It is significant to note, that some of Zherka’s earlier works of sketches and tapestry, and other works she developed early on, were lost in unclear circumstances, which to some extent obstructs a full perspective on her body of work.
Zherka completed her studies at the University of Prishtina in 1977, specializing in painting. She then continued her postgraduate studies in Belgrade, in the class of Milos Bajic, which she completed in 1980. It is here, in these academic environments, that her artistic language, and choice of medium (tapestry) was set (although she never abandoned painting).
The visual language at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prishtina, which partly informed her artistic formation, was predominantly set by its professors, who had themselves studied in one of the former-Yugoslav cities. It was not uncommon at the time in the Kosovar art community -- be it in visual arts, music, literature – that the thematic landscape be of national, and folkloric iconography.[1] Themes with imagery that spoke of Albanian history, and culture, were adopted by the artistic community. Furthermore, from today’s perspective, it appears that such visual language coming from Prishtina, was accepted by the other former-Yugoslav centers. To what degree this was accepted, is yet to be researched.
It is quite understandable then, that Zherka’s early work, such as the two pieces of tapestry “Towers of Resistance” (1978), that are now part of the “League of Prizren” collection, are characterized by such a topic, and imagery.
Furthermore, the choice of the medium appears to also be a kind of reawakening of the traditional, and the folkloric within “fine art”.[2] Tapestry, and wool work were common practices for rural, and pre-industrial Albanian communities, mostly practiced for clothing, and home décor, and was the kind of work that was practiced by women. These were practices that were still alive at the time (1970s), and partly practiced by local communities. The adoption of tapestry as a medium for creating unique pieces of art, that are part of exhibition making, and not artisanal, and within the cannon of contemporary art, was an interesting gesture as it were, and yet readable within the context of the art echo-system in Kosovo at the time. Furthermore, in a rather compelling shift, what seems to have been a going back to a traditional form of expression then, becomes today, from our perspective, a fresh, and novel gesture in the artist’s artistic development.
Zherka’s oeuvre is weaved as it were, in thematic cycles. As she puts it in one interview: “Because of my nature as a storyteller, I craft my artworks in cycles.”[3] The themes that occupy her extend in periods (she does not date her work), and they recur. The themes consist of the first cycle “Hope” that includes “The Towers of Resistance,” (1978—1980s), the second cycle “They” (1980s—ongoing), and the third cycle called “Journey” (1999—2023), or as she sometimes calls it, “Migration.”
Furthermore, these themes are in many ways, points of departure for her own almost ritualistic process of artmaking, where the process of the making of the work is of primary significance, rather than the final product.
Indeed, Zherka’s work is process oriented. It is very much about the physicality of tapestry making, the very laboriousness of making each piece from beginning to end. It puts forth as a primary focus the ritual of preparing the material, and making the work. Each piece is a process involving preparations of the wool, coloring of the wool, then the weaving process. Furthermore, she treats the process as an almost “archeological search” as she puts it, in which process she is seeking whatever is wanting to come out, whatever compels her time and time again, to create, to make, and begin the process anew.
With “Journey,” a cycle of her work most present in the exhibition, Zherka’s work develops fully into abstraction, unlike in the case of “They” and “The Towers of Resistance.” This cycle of her work no longer hints at figuration at all. Rather, here we see a series of lines, stripes, and formations that extended either vertically, or horizontally. They are lines of various colors, and what seem like lines that start, and stop. When speaking with the artist, she confirms that her process is always one of starting the work, stopping to take care of other things, such as her daily routines at home, then, of going back to the piece; continuing, starting, stopping.
It is these starts and stops that also echo her own creative path in many ways -- one of starts, obstructions, stops, and continuations. A kind of testimony too, of being a woman artist, who has to insist on her own space, the legitimacy of her work, and the significance of her labor, and the laborious process of her art making.
Text by Vesa Sahatçiu / Photos: Majlinda Hoxha / Courtesy of MCYS of Kosovo.