Haystacks: ongoing photographic project of 4000+ images made from 1989-ongoing
- Submitting institution
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De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32018
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- documenta 14, Kassel, Germany; National Museum of Photography Marubi, Albania; Chicago Arts Club, Chicago, USA; Alberto Peola Gallery Turin, Italy
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This body of work represents over 30 years of research and photography of the rural tradition of making haystacks in Eastern Europe, particularly in Kosovo and Albania. Composed of over 4000 images, more than 2000 of them made since 2016, Haystacks was chosen for documenta 14 (2017), one of the most respected international exhibitions of contemporary art, occurring only once every 5 years. Further major exhibitions of different groups of these images were invited to The National Museum of Photography, Marubi in Albania, The Artists Club of Chicago, USA, and Alberto Peolo Gallery in Turin and elsewhere.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- While living in Kosova (1989–1991), on a British Council / Yugoslav Government Scholarship, Meredith-Vula became fascinated with and began photographing the haystacks, not only to compare them to modern sculpture, but also as material evidence of an older way of rural life with which she sought to connect. The originality and rigour of the research lies in the decades long, sustained study of haystacks and the landscapes in which they are found. Meredith-Vula built a collection of nearly 4,000 images of haystacks, mostly taken in Eastern Europe. Nearly 2,000 of these images stem from her revisitation of the project in 2016. Returning to Kosova, Meredith-Vula was keen to explore the decline in the making of traditional haystacks, making images of the surviving practice into a valuable cultural and artistic archive. Putting the new images into dialogue with earlier work, via a series of new exhibitions of Haystacks, first with documenta 14 (2017), then in Wisdom Today and Forever at the Marubi National Museum of Photography in Shkodër, Albania (2017–2018) has foregrounded Kosovan resilience in the aftermath of the political turbulence of the late 1990s.
Haystacks has since been exhibited in spaces organised by artists, photographers, architects, farmers, and even circulated to diverse citizens invested in the history of the former Yugoslavia. At The Arts Club of Chicago, (March 2018) Haystacks represented part of the ‘society of things and thoughts’. Monika Szewczyk, curator and director of DeAppel Amsterdam wrote of the work, ‘Meredith-Vula’s works hold great relevance for broader questions we continued to ask about ways in which to organize politically, ecologically and aesthetically and about how to imagine our way out of multiple, intersecting crises and conflicts – feuds that break up communities, alienation of people from the land, loss of memory.’
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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