Blood Memory: Curatorial/performance/art creation of own photographs 2015-2017
- Submitting institution
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De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32017
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- National Gallery of Kosova; documenta 14, Athens, Greece; National Museum of Photography Marubi, Albania
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2015
- 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
- Blood Memory forms a series of curated reappraisals of the performance of forgiveness through Meredith-Vula’s photographs of blood feud reconciliations. A solo exhibition of the work at the National Gallery of Kosova in 2015 elicited political, familial and cultural discussion about reconciliation and led to an invitation to produce an immersive installation of the pieces at documenta 14 (2017), Athens as part of the exhibition’s political statement about identity, migration, forgiveness and minority rights. As a reinterpretation of Albanian history, Haystacks and Blood Memory were shown together in 2017 at The National Museum of Photography, Marubi in Shkodër.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Blood Memory’ researches the social, political and cultural significance of Blood Feud reconciliation photographs. It engages personal emotions and politics of global audiences, enabling universal lessons of reconciliation to be drawn from individual experience. In 2015 Meredith-Vula rigorously researched her own image archive, in dialogue with photographic historian Karen McQuaid, and National Gallery of Kosova Director Erzen Shkololli, creating a new work called ‘Blood Memory’; 40 images that would engage contemporary audiences emotionally and politically with the experience of the Blood Feud reconciliations.
The research embodies Meredith-Vula’s experience in Kosova in 1990–1991, when she observed these large-scale public reconciliations. This movement to reconcile traditional blood feuds had, at a time of Serbian oppression, a nationalistic dimension as an assertion of shared national identity. Drawing on movements to expose and forgive atrocities, like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa in 1995, ‘Blood Memory’ has become a focal point for Kosovan reconsideration and reconciliation of civil war harms. Meredith-Vula’s unique perspective as both half Albanian, and half British allowed her to get under the skin of her subjects like a native but apply an objective eye as a foreigner.
The artistic director of documenta 14, Adam Szymczyk, chose 5 works from Blood Memory to exhibit in one of the most political documenta exhibitions in history. Meredith-Vula reinterpreted them as a sculptural installation, allowing immersive viewing to give the experience of the performance of reconciliation. One of these works contributed to the The Parliament of Bodies, a public programme of political discussions about migration and identity at the centre of documenta 14, Athens.
Bringing ‘Blood Memory’ together with ‘Haystacks’ to consider Albanian identity and nationality in 2017, at the Marubi National Museum of Photography allowed yet another performance of the works, this time as Albanian heritage and patrimony.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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