The Dr. Eva Kahan Foundation is pleased to announce the first Austrian exhibition of the Kosovar artist Driton Selmani, opening at the Kahan Art Space Vienna on June 7th. The exhibition is curated by Hana Ostan Ožbolt.

At the forefront of Driton Selmani's (b. 1987 Kosovo, lives and works in Prishtina) media-diverse artistic practice are the issues of constructing (national) identity, the duality between the individual and the collective, and between memory and history. There is doubt present in all given realities. The personal and the political cannot be separated from each other, and even if one can define this as one of the characteristics of the vital Kosovo art scene – which has recently received widespread international attention with the last edition of Manifesta – Selmani stands out with his continuous poetical, witty and ironic documentation of our epiphanies and postulations, desires, and anxieties, covering topics ranging from ecology to popular culture.
The exhibition is accompanied by the project in public space Geisters or Vice Versa (2019/2023), which reflects on the complexity and gaps between time, memory and place and consists of billboards positions around Vienna in the public space. For more information on the Geisters project, please click here.

Driton Selmani: "Everything We Do Is Really, Really Brilliant"
at the Kahan Art Space Vienna
June 7th - August 27th, 2023
Grosse Pfarrgasse 7
1020 Vienna

Opening Times:
Sat - Sun 11am - 5pm

"Everything We Do Is Really, Really Brilliant" will be further viewable at the Kahan Art Space Budapest from December 8th 2023 - January 23rd, 2024

Driton Selmani (b. 1987 Kosovo, lives and works in Prishtina) approaches the idea of perceived reality by deconstructing formations of social, political, and cultural topics that have been embodied around him. At a young age, he was told to worship a country that no longer existed, which caused him to form a basis of skepticism towards any supposedly given reality. He later used this as a beneficial tool to reconstruct his beliefs into visual artifacts. In 1999, old simulacra have been replaced by new simulacra; the ornaments of a previous space have been refurbished in order to unfold with new meanings but also new uncertainties. Selmani confronts himself as a spectator of this “ongoing event”, but rather positions himself as an actor, enacting his performances based on his personal histories, beliefs, and doubts.

Recent solo exhibitions were held at MoCa, Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje (2022); Salon Galič, Split (2022); Tillt Radio, Prishtina (2022); Palace of Youth, Prishtina (2021); Muzeji i Galerije Podgorica, Montenegro (2021); Corridor Project Space, Amsterdam (2021); Ta.da, Copenhagen (2021); U10 – Belgrade (2021). His works have been exhibited as part of group exhibitions at LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina (2022); Manifesta 14, Kosovo (2022); 18th Tallinn Print Triennial, curated by Róna Kopeczky (2022); »Bigger than Myself. Heroic voices from ex-Yugoslavia«, MAXXI, Rome, curated by Zdenka Badovinac (2021); Škuc Gallery (2020). In 2023, Selmani will hold, among others, a solo exhibition at Apiece Gallery, Vilnius; Eva Kahan Foundation (Vienna and Budapest), and will exhibit as part of group exhibitions at Kunsthaus Graz.

Hana Ostan Ožbolt (b. 1991, Slovenia; lives and works in Vienna) is an art historian working as an independent curator, writer and lecturer. From 2018 she worked for the ULAY Foundation, being its Director between 2019–2022.

A selection of recent curatorial projects include »Ulay: The Great Journey«, HOW Art Museum, Shaghai (2023); »I Had a Dog and a Cat« with David Fesl, Andreas Fogarasi, Katalin Ladik, Denisa Lehocká, David Maljković, Josse Pyl, Michael E. Smith, Kazuna Taguchi, Curated by festival, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna (2022); »Maria Sulymenko: Is it time yet?«, Georg Kargl BOX (2022); »BODY ECSTATIC BODY ECLECTIC BODY ECCENTRIC« with Ana Mendieta, Annegret Soltau, Arvida Byström, Elena Tejada-Herrera, Iza Pavlina, Jeremy Shaw, Letícia Parente, Marina Abramović, Molly Soda, Sanja Iveković, Ulay, Ulrike Rosenbach, ULAY Foundation Project Space, (2021); »ULAY WAS HERE«, Stedelijk Museum, co-curated with Hripsimé Visser and Rein Wolfs (2020–2021); »Double Wall of Silence« with Daniel García Andújar, Louis-Cyprien Rials, Driton Selmani, Ariel Schlesinger, Vangjush Vellahu, Škuc Gallery/Hestia Belgrade, co-curated with Anja Obradović (2019–2020); »Driton Selmani: Places We Leave Behind«, HOoST (2019).

Hana Ostan Ožbolt is a contributor for Artforum. She holds a Guest Professorship at die Angewandte, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien.

Artists Edition: Unknown Proverb, 2023

To accompany the exhibition "Everything We Do Is Really, Really Brilliant" the artist and the Dr. Eva Kahan Foundation have created a special edition of the work Unknown Proverb, 2023.

Driton Selmani — Unknown Proverb, 2023
Dimensions: 100 cm × 70 cm, Digital photography
Courtesy of the Artist

The edition is available framed or unframed.