Kosovo (Republic of)

The sculptural installation The Echoing Silences of Metal and Skin addresses feminized labour and workplace inequality. Investigating the joint deindustrialization of the economy and deregulation of the labour market, Doruntina Kastrati encounters the (im)material forms of precarious employment in light industries in the aftermath of the 1999 Kosovo War. The gendered labour in industries like food production has rendered women economically vulnerable and pushed them to the political margins. Kastrati’s project engages with the experiences of twelve female workers of a Turkish delight factory in Prizren, Kosovo’s second largest city and the artist’s hometown. In part because the factory’s employees perform their work from a standing position, nearly one third of them undergo knee replacement surgery. The metal objects that are implanted in their knees are traces of the long hours they work for low wages. Kastrati’s installation consists of metal sculptures modelled after the shells of different nuts that are used as ingredients in Turkish delights. Charged with symbolic meaning while alluding to the estrangement of working-class women, the pavilion’s constituent parts honour first-person narratives and create incisive associations.