Memorizonim

Blerta Hashani’s Memorizonim (Memorization) unfolds as a rhythmic sequence of twenty-four works of varying scales, each composition distilling nature into fundamental forms and lines that evoke elusive memories animated by fleeting glimpses of the everyday. The works invite viewers into the quiet, fragmented intimacies of rural life. Jotting down traces of past memories, Hashani’s recent drawings and paintings blend materials and themes in an oneiric pursuit of new narrative forms.

What becomes immediately apparent in her work is that not everything and everyone is carried into the future. Certain progress-driven processes during Kosovo’s transitional period led to the erasure of other ways of being and doing life, impacting rural areas as well, which, far from being secluded and static in time, also underwent deep transformations. Many of the rural elements that Hashani depicts are often objects discarded, no longer useful in their original context, yet standing as witnesses to another way of life. In their decontextualized state, they seem deprived of the world that once birthed them.

This gradual erosion is too subtle for the eye to detect and too routine to leave a lasting impression. Engaging in a dynamic process of remembering and memory-making, Hashani’s works—sometimes taking the form of note-taking—manifest through a conscious act of looking that goes beyond surface appearances, continually reimagining what is seen. This form of note-taking is both attentive and contemplative, lived and felt, and it allows her to zoom in and out of her rural surroundings.

Hashani’s distinct approach to painting is evident in her oil works on wooden boards, framed by repurposed brown jute sacks—common objects in rural settings—which serve as a backdrop to her visually layered compositions. The rigid, repetitive thread patterns of the jute and the oil painting on wooden boards on the other hand both resist and accommodate each other's narrative space. Previously kept as two separate realms, in the new body of works presented as part of the exhibition Memorizonim, the themes and the color palette also spill onto the jute. What once was a passive backdrop, now evolves into a narrative device, offering space for figurative exploration that extends beyond the confines of the wooden board.

Mobilized to preserve what little remains, Hashani’s note-taking enters a terrain of affective archive and self-historization. Between a landscape and a headless body, Mburoja e Shtypur (The crushed shield), 2024, depicts a tilted figure burdened by the heavy weight it must carry. Upon closer inspection, the three-colored painting at the center of the jute frame reveals the female body striving to maintain a balance between an oppressive environment and her personal space. The headless woman represents the split between body and mind. Mainly in the service of others, women in rural areas are disconnected from the life of the mind, forced into reproductive roles while their desires are overlooked. Positioned at the center of the picture plane, the female figure stands firm, contouring a home and imbuing meaning into the realities of those around her. While in the work Memorizonim (Memorization), 2023, from which the entire exhibition takes its title, other biographical references are intertwined within the red-dyed jute. Different temporal elements collage and layer the work. In the process of restoring her mother’s embroidery frames, the torn, time-marked back panel finds its way into Hashani’s work, with its fragments embedded within the red composition. At the top of the wooden board, a bee with a camera for wings hovers above the wavy, penciled grass, traversing meadows and weaving a compendium of recorded single moments, its dominating red reminiscent of the flickering light of a rolling camera.

With Memorizonim, Hashani’s note-taking becomes an act of critical and imaginative memorization, returning to her recurring theme of history’s narrow lens—a lens too indifferent and selective to capture the everyday occurrences, subtle erasures, and different subject positions taking form within rural life.