MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo

SISLEJ XHAFA
Benvenuto!
2 June 2016 - 9 October 2016

curated by Hou Hanru and Luigia Lonardelli

“I was born in Kosova, I lived in Italy and now I am in the United States. The reality which describes me is a fluctuant one.”

He has furnished the waiting room of a police station in Gent like a grand palace; he presented a clandestine Albanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale and has used the Ljubljana train station as if it were a stock exchange selling wishes and hopes to people instead of shares: is Sislej Xhafa, an ironic and subversive artist who draws inspiration from the complexity and contradictions of reality, to whom MAXXI devoted a retrospective.

The exhibition comprises about 30 works, spanning his career from the 1990s through to the present, including a new work the artist has created especially for this show. MAXXI is presenting the full range of his artistic output that draws inspiration from the contradictions of contemporary reality.

“Reality is stronger than art. As an artist I do not want to reflect a reality, but I do want to question it.”
The exhibition’s title is taken from the major installation created by the artist in 2000 within the ambit of the Arte all’Arte project in the Casole d’Elsa hills near Siena.

BENVENUTO! Sislej Xhafa is a visual journey through the complexity of the modern world in which each work encourages the observer to reflect, both in personal and collective terms, on the social, economic and political phenomena of our world.