Laureta Hajrullahu

In collaboration with Residency.ch, Kino Kosova enables emerging Kosovar artists to deepen their artistic practice during a two-month stay in Switzerland and connect with Bern’s vibrant cultural scene. The Artist in Residence programme builds on the festival’s core mission: to open new perspectives through artistic creation, encourage exchange and dialogue, and serve as a bridge between different cultural scenes.

This year, visual artist Laureta Hajrullahu is participating in the Residency Programme. Her work explores the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds, as well as themes of intimacy, gender, and digital ecosystems. She works with digital media and textiles.

In Dialogue
Anita Muçolli

As an additional format in this festival edition, Anita Muçolli will enter into dialogue with the festival and its themes. She is a Swiss artist with Kosovar roots whose artistic practice explores the psychological impact of objects, buildings, and spaces.

The results of this artistic exploration will be presented at various locations throughout the festival at the PROGR Cultural Centre, particularly in the exhibition space Labor at PROGR.

In addition, an artist talk will take place on Saturday, 12 September, reflecting on and engaging with the works of both artists (see timetable).

The Artist in Residence programme is supported by:

• Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation
• SüdKulturFonds

Biography

Laureta Hajrullahu (*1997) is a visual artist based in Prishtina who explores the shifting boundaries between the virtual and physical realms. Through installations, video works and game-based environments, she constructs speculative landscapes that challenge conventional notions of identity, space and “reality” itself. Her work resonates with a generation that is living an increasingly hybrid life.
Working with industrial fabrication and synthetic materials, Hajrullahu builds intricate installations that blend technology and fiction, creating immersive and seemingly living environments where human presence is no longer central.

Her research spans plants and particles, clouds and computer memory, bringing together scientific, aesthetic, and speculative perspectives. Through this approach, she cultivates attentiveness to materials and opens space for alternative narratives and counter-histories to emerge.

Laureta Hajrullahu has participated in numerous exhibitions, including the Biennale Manifesta 14, at the National Gallery of Kosovo, Zona Sztuki Aktuelnej, Bazament Art Space in Tirana, FORUM STADTPARK in Graz, Tallinn Art Hall, Art Quarter in Budapest, Vänersborgs Konsthall with GIBCA Extended and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montenegro. She was an Artist in Residence at the Academy of Art in Szczecin, scholarship holder of St.AiR and shortlisted for the Young Visual Artist Award.

ANITA Muçolli (*1993) is a Swiss-born Kosovar artist based in Basel, Switzerland.

Anita Muçolli explores the psychological impact of objects, buildings, and spaces. Starting from what already exists, she relocates it in a new constellation, a new material, or a new, smoothened formal language. This method of alienation and distillation enables a focused examination both of the expressive qualities of spaces and objects and of the social and political intentions behind their design. Muçolli directs her critique at the Western belief in progress, whose measuring-stick is the conviction that all of humanity’s problems can be solved through ever-new technologies. What presents itself, on the one hand, as sleek, efficiency-driven design reveals, on the other hand, an increasingly blatant loss of the spiritual, emotional, or ethical. This mixture of optimism, performance-oriented thinking, but also fear, manifests itself in ambivalent, abstract forms, which Muçolli surveys and investigates, addressing in particular the disappearance of the humane dimension in our societies as the price paid for technological perfection.

Anita Muçolli has exhibited in numerous group shows including at ifa Galerie, Berlin; Autostrada Biennale Prizren, Kosovo; Tirana Art Weekend, Albania; Widefield Geneva; Kunsthaus Baselland; Kunsthaus Langenthal; Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal; Museo Villa die Cedri, Bellinzona; The National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Gallery Von Bartha, Basel; Kunst- und Kulturzentrum Montabaur, Germany; and the Swiss Art Awards, Basel.

Her first solo show was held at Sattelkammer, Bern, followed by Liste Art Fair, Basel, Kulturfolger Zürich, Centre d’art contemporain Yverdon-les-Bains, and Kunsthaus Biel Centre d'art Bienne (KBCB). She was the recipient of the Manor Art Prize 2026 of the Canton of Bern, and of the Helvetia Art Prize 2021; was amongst the laureates of the Kiefer Hablitzel I Göhner Art Prize 2022; and was nominated for the Swiss Art Award 2024, for the Shizuko Yoshikawa Award 2024 and for the Prix Mobilière 2026.

She completed both her BA (2020) and MA (2022) studies at the Basel Academy of Art & Design FHNW.