Representing the Republic of Kosovo at the 59th Venice Biennale, Jakup Ferri’s The Monumentality Of The Everyday is a cheerful feast for the imagination. It features large-scale paintings, embroideries and hand-woven rugs with geometric designs showcasing a playful, whimsical, and somewhat surrealist take on ‘the everyday’. Punchy coloured canvases teeming with a hodgepodge of characters – acrobats, anthropomorphic animals, children, and musicians – are reminiscent of children’s drawings and the works draw from both urban life and folk tradition, reflecting Ferri’s long-standing affinity for so-called ‘outsider’ (produced by untrained artists) and vernacular art.
The design of the pavilion, mimicking the rounded interior of a submarine, encourages casual, informal engagement with the works. Viewers are asked to remove their shoes before entering and have taken to lying down on the carpets, hands behind their heads with elbows flared out as if taking in the sights from their own living room. In this celebration of the everyday, the little tasks built into our quotidian routines – trivialities such as brushing your teeth, getting dressed, vacuuming, hanging clothes out to dry, watching television, listening to music, and riding a bike – are magnified and amplified into vivid moments of levity and joy.
In one of the most memorable paintings of the exhibition, a family stands beneath the sun and clouds, catching streams of raindrops in their pails. A little girl stands off to the side, with a life-size glass that is nearly full, catching drops of sunshine, reminding us not to forget the light peeking through the clouds.
The Monumentality Of The Everyday is at Venice Biennale until 27 November
Suzana Vuljevic is a historian, literary translator, and writer. She holds a PhD in history and comparative literature from Columbia University. Her essays and translations have been published in AGNI, Eurozine, Exchanges and more
