Artist Name: Agrina Vllasaliu
Residency Dates: May – June 2023
Born: 1990
Hometown: Pristina, Kosovo
Lives & Works: Berlin, Germany
URL: https://secondaryarchive.org/artists/agrina-vllasaliu/ | Instagram: agrina_vllasaliu_art
Education:
2012-2021 | Master’s Degree in Geography, Humboldt University, Berlin
2012-2022 | Master’s Degree in Fine Art, University of Arts, Berlin
Bio/Statement:
Agrina Vllasaliu is the recipient of the 2022 Artists of Tomorrow Awards.
Agrina left Kosovo for Germany with her parents in 1992 due to Kosovo’s unstable political situation. As a child she was raised bilingually between the Albanian and German cultures.
In her practice, Agrina combines various materials and media such as painting, photography, video, installation and sculpture. Her current approaches to art go hand in hand with her studies in the field of geography at Humboldt University (Berlin). The latter allowed her to scientifically research and question sociocultural and physical geographical processes, while her art studies at the University of the Arts (Berlin) enabled her to transfer the research results into a new plane of interpretation. Agrina’s interests focus on areas relating to migration, individual and collective conceptions of identities, and the transmission of cultural practices and narratives from a feminist perspective. As a bilingual child of parents that migrated from Kosovo, she explores the boundaries between home and homeland, identities and cultures. The ever-recurring exploration of these themes accompanies her artistic work, which always revolves around the deconstruction of these highly complex concepts with the help of a wide variety of media and materials.
Agrina exhibits her work internationally, and recently has started to teach in a high school in Berlin. She is currently participating in the group show An Imagination of Bodily Autonomy at Galerie im Saalbau in Berlin. Other recent exhibitions include: Tourist in your Own home at GlogauAIR, Berlin (2023); Where do you think you’re going? at Salon am Moritzplatz, Berlin (2022); I AM ELEVATING IN ALL WAYS at Kleine Humboldt Galerie, Berlin (2022); Hast du Lust at Improper Walls, Vienna (2022); potentiell verletzlich at KUNSTRAUM 53, Hildesheim (2022); sleeping promises at feldfünf, Berlin (2022).
Click here to watch the artist’s interview published on YVAA Instagram (April 21, 2023).
Support: Agrina Vllasaliu’s residency is made possible with support from The Trust for Mutual Understanding.
