Sislej Xhafa

Sislej Xhafa

family album Woven Soil

Sislej Xhafa was born in Peja (Kosovo) in 1970 and now lives in New York. He deals with questions of identity and migration in an ironic and subversive way, using a wide variety of media. In Switzerland, he is known for his art in architecture project «Y» in Hardaupark Zürich-West. His work «family album Woven Soil» refers to the close historical connection between Kosovo and Switzerland and the associated migration stories. In 1999, the Swiss government launched an aid initiative to bring cows to Kosovo in order to rebuild agriculture after the war. Originally, the artist had planned to transport some cows from the Swiss descendants back to Switzerland and thus enable them to meet their «original family». However, the Swiss «regulations for the import of live animals» made this impossible. Some of the descendants of the immigrated Swiss cows have now been portrayed photographically on a farm in Kosovo and meet their Swiss family in the form of a «photo album» with an installation spread across the Spittelmatte alp.