Two exhibitions visited at two very different times in two very different places:
23 January 2026 Petrit Halilaj at Tate Modern Performer and Participant exhibition
Halilaj “uses moths as a motif to tell a difficult history of childhood in his family houe in Kostërrc – a home which was destroyed during the Kosovo War (1998-9). Resonating with the larger social and political context of displacement, they can symbolise the persistence of optimism and metamorphosis.” What touched me the most about these was the fact that Halilaj created them working over many months with his mother using traditional Kosovar fabrics such as Qilim and Dyshek carpets. I love a family collaboration and remember working on pieces with my grandmother as well as now working with my mother, stapfather, husband and children. The video of Halilaj dressed as a moth moving frantically under a filckering lightbulb was mesmerising, captivating and hypnotising as his moves seemed so realistic it was easy to forget there was an actual human in a costume and not a real insect. As Halilaj himself said: “I can enter [into this costume] and the body dissapears, becoming an insect, I just escaped another time to talk and confess about something that is still too complicated…”
28 July 2026 Eva Kotátková at Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw as part of the exhibition Adolescence
She mentions learning about loving nature as a teenager while being taken to the Zoo, where they show you butterflies in display cases, with wings pinned. She remembers many such contradictions, which caused chaos in her head but which also brought the neccesity to as uncomfortable questions. The question ‘What if I were the butterfly in the museum?’ is not naive, it is the first step towards unlearning the human centric world we live in.’
The work is about fragility, not fitting in, as well as possibilities of dreaming, transformation and resistance. The butterflies are nocturnal months but with a diurnal activity. This meant they had to adapt to the new situation but still keep their bodies, which made them look like visitors from the night world.
When thinking about my wings project there is the aspect of creating something from another world, and also as a teenager, who was initially the tallest, than had the smallest breasts and then started having slightly too large thighs, dreaming to be something different/other than just human, feeling like I might find more peace among other creatures, feel more like myself. Making something I can put on myself, transform temporarily, hoping I will dissapear, at least as myself, and that there will be a potential of showing myself to others as someone/something completely different. Being unattainable and fascinating at the same time, being the observer and observed, but without the dangerous possibility of toxic interaction. When it’s ok to look and be surprised, it’s ok to stare, but not to say something to me. And I don’t want to feel like I have to respond. The wings become armour, crafted carefully by multiple hands of female collective from Koniaków village and hand stitched to willow sticks tied with jute string, stitched to an orthopaedic corset. I gravitated towards the corset as the base because it reminds me of the time when my stepfather discoverd I had scoliosis and I had to spend entire two summers in a special physiotherapy facility, exercising to straighten out my back and avoid surgery. The whole experience was traumatic but it saved my posture and gave me the strongest abs others always admired that lasted even after giving birth twice. To me it’s about acceptance, fragility, learning to love myself both externally and internally, and love the weirdo insecure neurotic flickering insect in me.
