Doruntina Kastrati
HERE (AIR CARRIES POISON BUT YET WE BREATHE)
30 April – 26 June 2021

Bungalow is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Germany of Kosovar artist Doruntina Kastrati, titled HERE (AIR CARRIES POISON BUT YET WE BREATHE), on occasion of the Berlin Gallery Weekend 2021.

Doruntina Kastrati presents a new video titled HERE, filmed across various construction sites and national highways in Kosovo. Based on an earlier documentary narrating the stories of local construction workers, HERE is a continuation of Kastrati’s ongoing research on the social political issues of Kosovo and the Balkan region, starting from the lives of affected individuals who experience outrage, desolation and indignity from being exploited in order to pave a growing city. The film displays a dizzying, alienating perspective of the country, whose concrete infrastructure overshadows and obscures its people. 

The exhibition includes new sculptural works made from 3D scans molded after the bodies of injured workers, revealing areas of injury during workplace accidents. Constructed out of fabric, resin and wool, the works invite discourse on the dissonance between official workplace policies in Kosovo and the exploitation that takes place within the private sector.  

Doruntina Kastrati (b. 1991, Kosovo) lives and works in Prishtina, Kosovo. She was awarded the Young Visual Artist Award from the National Gallery of Kosovo in 2014, and the Hajde x 6 Award from the Hajde Foundation in 2017. She was a resident at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York in 2015, a resident at Art House in Shkodër in 2018 and at Initiators in  Athens in 2018. 

Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include: “Soft as Silk”, Belgrade Youth Center, Serbia (2021); Autostrada Biennale, curated by Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu and Joanna Warsza, Prizren, Kosovo (2021);  “Bigger than Myself – Heroic Voices from ex Yugoslavia”, curated by Zdenka Badovinac at MAXXI Museum, Rome (2021); “Not Fully Human, Not Human at All” at Kadist Foundation Paris (2021); “Tirana Patience”, National Gallery of Arts in Tirana (2020); “Public Heroes and Secrets”, curated by Hana Halilaj, The National Museum of Kosovo, Prishtina, 2020; “Red Landscape”, curated by Vala Osmani, Stacion Center for Contemporary Art, Prishtina (2017).