PIERS GREVILLE ‘Unbordering Worlds: New Narratives for Northern Kosovo’ at Northern Centre for Contemporary Art

May 5, 2024

Piers Greville is being exhibited at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) from 27.04. – 3.06.23 as part of ‘Unbordering Worlds: New Narratives for Northern Kosovo’. Curated by Petrit Abazi, the show documents the two large-scale public installations by Piers Greville (Australia) and Stanislava Pinchuk (Ukraine) and was commissioned by Manifesta: The European Nomadic Biennial – the world’s fourth largest art event. This was the first time an Australian art gallery was invited to make a curatorial contribution to the prestigious Biennial.

In 2022, Manifesta 14 travelled to Prishtina, capital city of Kosovo. Featuring a 100-day programme of art, performances, events and workshops, it set the goal of empowering citizens to reclaim and re-engage with public space in one of Europe’s fastest growing capitals. Taking its cue from the Biennial’s localised approach to storytelling, ‘Unbordering Worlds’ delivered two ambitious, site-specific artistic and social experiments: Pinchuk’s ‘Europe Without Monuments’ and Greville’s ‘What Is Here’. Each situated at different points along the Ibër River that both divides and connects Mitrovica, these installation-performances were ephemeral propositions addressing two highly politicised bridges. Both works advocated a softening of hard geopolitical lines into centrifugal, mobile and overlapping zones, striving in the name of Mitrovica’s peace-builders to reclaim public space and reconnect a divided city. 

‘What is Here’ presented a temporary installation and performance in the middle of the Ibar, near the remnants of a destroyed pedestrian bridge. Participants took turns to swim on the spot against the river’s current.  The total distance swum during the project was symbolically 35 kilometres: beyond the border of Serbia and Kosovo. This struggle against the frigid waters was also live-streamed to the Grand Hotel Prishtina. 

The artist says: “We swam on the spot, like a treadmill. It was a way of thinking about a river as static but dynamic at the same time; you stay in one spot but the river is moving through. A swim was as good as a bridge. The flags that flank the broken bridge are markers for peace in neutral colours which signal terrain rather than territory.”

A publication which covers the project has also been released and is available to view at Dominik Mersch Gallery.

Image captions: Piers Greville, ‘What is Here’, 2022, hand drawn silk flags, 120 x 180cm each and durational performance, video, 9 hours (dimensions variable). Installation photographs by Marcello Maranzan. Exhibition launch photographs by Jack Bullen.