Rexhep Selimi paints: a work dedicated to the KLA

The seventh season of the programme “ArtKand”, hosted by Jetona Koçibelli, launched today on Top Channel. The first episode exclusively featured a watercolour by Rexhep Selimi.

“We will open this first episode with an exclusive work, a watercolour by the well-known Rexhep Selimi. All our eyes are now turned toward Kosovo, especially after the judgment and the decision that the Specialist Chambers in The Hague took against the four former KLA leaders, including Rexhep Selimi. In total they have been sentenced to more than eight decades in prison, while Rexhep Selimi has been sentenced to 13 years. Beyond his important side — undoubtedly the wartime side, his part strongly tied to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and undoubtedly the love and the followers he has in Kosovo — he also has another dimension. He paints. We have said it before on ArtKand, when a solo exhibition of his opened, but we are pleased to bring Rexhep Selimi for the first time through symbols — three letters so closely identified with the history of the Albanian nation and the history of Kosovo: KLA,” Jetona Koçibelli said as she presented the watercolour by the former Kosovo Liberation Army leader.

Speaking about the work, Ardian Isufi said that “there is no better way for ‘ArtKand’ to start this new season than with a symbolic work, which speaks volumes both on the symbolic side and on the aesthetic side”.

“In our analyses we also say that art is politics and politics is art. And in this case, this artist-politician has brought, so naturally, in a watercolour, the symbol of the KLA. A symbol that unites all Albanians wherever they are — for the war, for the sacrifice, for the national identity. Red and black, and all the element surrounding it, looks very abstracted, but it seems almost as if this symbol emerges from a flag,” Isufi said.