Flaka Haliti: tea towels have something to do with tea

For the first time Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle is presenting a solo exhibition by the Kosovar artist Flaka Haliti, who represented her home country at the 56th Venice Biennale last year. At least since then she is internationally known for her geopolitical explorations of national borders and the identities of unions such as the UN or the EU. At the Venice Biennale, she filled a room with blue sand and placed iron bar constructions in it that usually serve to reinforce the concrete elements of border walls. The room was flooded with light transitioning from white to yellow, red, pink and blue, twice a day in reference to the blue hour. With every colour the perception of the space changed completely; especially in the blue light the lines between the walls and the floor blurred and opened up the room into the infinite — an allusion to open national borders like those within the European Union and, at the same time, an affront to the Venice Biennale’s principle of exhibiting different nations.
In the exhibition „tea towels have something to do with tea“ at Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Flaka Haliti transfers the installation “My Gravity Slipped Away,” which was just shown at the project space SALTS in Birsfelden (CH), to the gallery space in Munich. A grey and white squared grid spans across the depth of the exhibition space in the form of a wallpaper — alluding to an empty Photoshop document. This “blank sheet” is populated by
stained-glass stick-figures. Originally, these drawings were made by children from all over the world who attend an international school in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). Flaka Haliti transferred these drawings onto child-sized glass panels and has located them in this no man’s land. Visitors are now invited to walk on the surface to get in contact with these figures. This room-in-room situation merges the digital with the analogue world and thus
creates a kind of neutral ground, which is transferable to any and all locations.