Manifesta, the roving European biennial, will take place in the capital of Kosovo in 2022.
Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, with the National Library in the foreground. Photo by Liridon, via Wikimedia Commons.
Every other summer, many contemporary art seekers plan their vacations around the location of Manifesta, the biennial exhibition that moves from city to city within Europe, last year alighting in Palermo and, in 2020, relocating to Marseille. The show after that, in 2022, will take place in a slightly more off-the-beaten-path locale. In a press conference Friday, the show’s director Hedwig Fijen announced that Manifesta 14 will take place in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.
The exhibition organizers recognized the relatively new country’s history of political unrest, but said it aimed to “support the citizens of Kosovo in their ambition to reclaim public space and to rewrite the future of their city as an open-minded metropolis in the heart of the Balkans.”
In a statement, Fijen said:
The cultural, legal and political paralysis of the 1990s resulted in a loss of sense of public space and a lack of recognition for what is common. I wish Manifesta can provide Pristina the means to reconstruct, redefine and reclaim a radicalised and diverse public space, which still seems to be today regarded as a cultural subversive act, which can become a call for change.
The next edition of Manifesta opens in locations around the city of Marseille on June 7th, and will be curated by Alya Sebti, the director of Ifa Gallery in Berlin; Katerina Chuchalina, who is senior chief curator of the Moscow-based V-A-C Foundation; Marina Otero Verzier, who is director of research at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam; and Stefan Kalmár, director of the ICA London.
