Out of the Blue and into the Black: Mobility and Sculptural Opacity in the Work of Flaka Haliti and Serge Alain Nitegeka

Abstract

Modernist sculpture is often interpreted through its transparent capacity. In both Clement Greenberg's formalism and the technological and sociological experiments of the avant-garde – especially Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Vladimir Tatlin – transparency, the capacity to see through a work and view it from multiple perspectives, binds aesthetic taste to ideologies of belonging. And yet the realities of border militarization and forced displacement means these transparent forms are more readily located in the architecture of border fences and camps. Kosovar Flaka Haliti and Burundian Serge Alain Nitegeka create abstract sculptures that directly confront the reality of constrained mobility. Haliti's Speculating on the Blue examines Kosovo's post-conflict agency as constructed by the EU and NATO, where its exclusion extends to refugees entering Europe through the Balkans. And Nitegeka's site-specific installations, informed by his experiences of forced displacement, evoke border fences and improvized shelters common to refugee camps. Rather than the universal schema of Greenbergian transparency, Haliti and Nitegeka evince an “opacity,” theorized by Martiniquais poet/critic Édouard Glissant as a wilful resistance to universal legibility, asserting an irreducible individual agency. Declaring a “right to opacity,” both artists consider how the particular histories of conflict, displacement, and humanitarian intervention relate to other contexts through a recognition of difference. Following Glissant's theory of relation, Haliti and Nitegeka propose new conceptions of commonality where the utopian becomes concrete. Haliti considers the possibility of dissolving partition, as Nitegeka's 100 Stools addresses the need for hospitality and dignity for immigrants in South Africa's xenophobic climate.

Keywords:

• Glissant, Édouard
• Haliti, Flaka
• immigration
• Nitegeka, Serge Alain
• sculpture
• transparency

Notes

1 Autonomy and self-administration are the core principles of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which defines Kosovo's post-conflict status as both “within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” and advocates a “final settlement,” understood by both parties as expressing their right to sovereignty over Kosovo.

2 Haliti describes the country's history as “most connected to armed conflict trauma and refugees” (Miessen and Haliti 2015, 155).

3 The most common route moves from Greece, Albania, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Ahmetasevic and Bošković 2018).

4 On Burundi's history in the Great Lakes region of Africa, see Mamdani (2001, 204–205, 215–217, 230–231; Prunier 2009, 59–67).

5 In this way Nitegeka's work resembles the “theatricality” of minimalist sculpture, critiqued by Michael Fried for its disjuncture with the disinterestedness of modernist practice (Fried 1998, 160–161).

6 Kersting and Malcomess (2012) devote considerable attention to Nitegeka's art historical influences.