TALK: SEAD KAZANXHIU

FUNCTION OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Lecture and a conversation conducted by Artan Sadiku.

Sead Kazandziu is one of the artists whose work will be exhibited in the exhibition All That We Have In Common, organized by the Museum of contemporary art in Skopje and Manifesta Biennial. We will talk and explore how identity issues feature in contemporary art today through the works of Sead Kazanxhiu. Is identity a limitation in a predetermined scope or does it open an unlimited space for exploration toward increasing the visibility of the voices that cannot be heard? How are the minoritarian identities politicized in the context of the dominant and mainstreamed ones? Does contemporary art today become too distant from traditional identities that it breaks up a bond with emancipatory causes?

Sead Kazanxhiu (born 1987) is a visual artist from Baltëz-Fier in southwest Albania, currently living and working in Tirana. He works across various mediums, including painting, installations, video, and performance. Kazanxhiu’s work as an artist, and as a cultural producer more generally, reflects his position as an Albanian Roma citizen. Profoundly aware of the ways that social and political hierarchies within the nation-state reinforce unequal privileges and prevent participation, Kazanxhiu’s practice foregounds and addresses issues of politics, activism, prejudice, exclusion, and the environment. His image-making represents the efforts of a single artist devoted to restoring the dignity of a cultural group that has been forcefully and unjustly marginalized within the structures of European democracy.