Not all people exist in the same Now

A social and political order can be described as a landscape. That is the premise that underwrites the images of the poet and the metaphors of the philosopher and statesman. There is a genius of place that animates the landscape and makes it ‘free.’ There is a spirit of the laws, an accumulation of ways of being upon which the real force of legislation rests. Nature inspires both one and the other, and each can be a metaphor for the other. 

— Jacques Rancière, The Time of the Landscape 

Marking the reopening of the National Gallery of Kosovo after the complete renovation and reconfiguration of its exhibition spaces, Not all people exist in the same Now inaugurates a new phase in the institution’s public and infrastructural development. The exhibition coincides with the establishment of the institution’s first collection storage facility, creating new capacities for the preservation, study, and reinterpretation of the collection.

Spanning from the 1970s to the present, the exhibition brings together works from NGK’s permanent collection and a selection of contemporary artistic practices, rendering visible the ways in which identity, memory, and belonging are claimed, as well as contested. Beginning with the prominence of landscape in some of the earliest works in the collection, the exhibition expands outward to trace how artists across generations reshaped relationships to place amid the rise of neoliberalism and Kosova’s political and social transformations from the post-war period to the present.

During the period in which Kosova held the status of an autonomous province within socialist Yugoslavia, political expression was constrained. In this context, the recurring depiction of idyllic fields, mountains, villages, and rural environments carried a persistent assertion of presence. Within these images, landscape operates as a coded surface through which belonging acquires political form.

Placed in dialogue with these historical works, contemporary practices extend this understanding of landscape beyond the depiction of territory. They approach space as a social and historical formation marked by mobility, erasure, and the uneven effects of political change. Taken together, these works present landscape not as a coherent or fixed image of geography but as a condition in which histories and relations to place remain unsettled.

Not all people exist in the same Now takes its title from Ernst Bloch’s essay “Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics,” in which he considers how different historical temporalities coexist within the same apparent present. The collection emerges as a constellation that brings inherited narratives into critical dialogue with contemporary conditions. Together, the works reveal the present as unequal and unfinished, shaped by histories that do not arrive in the same way for all bodies, places, or generations. At the same time, they remain open to social and political possibilities that have not yet fully emerged.

The exhibition extends into a specially curated display within the NGK’s new collection storage facility. Accessible through guided visits with staff members (during designated hours or by appointment), this section presents works connected to the exhibition, which will rotate between the storage display and the main galleries to foreground the provisional nature of collection displays and bring different historical relations into view over time.

Participating artists:
Adem Kastrati, Agim Çavdarbasha, Agim Rudi, Alban Muja, Alije Vokshi, Bedri Emra, Bora Baboçi, Brilant Milazimi, Budim Berisha, Doruntina Kastrati, Driant Zeneli, Driton Hajredini, Esat Valla, Ëngjëll Berisha, Fatmir Krypa, Feriha Rada, Gjelosh Gjokaj, Halil Muhaxhiri, Hamdi Bardhi, Hilmija Ćatović, Hyrije Krypa, Hysni Krasniqi, Ibrahim Ponosheci, Isa Alimusaj, Jakup Ferri, Kadrush Rama, Lala Meredith Vula, Masar Caka, Muslim Mulliqi, Nebih Muriqi, Nimon Lokaj, Petrit Halilaj, Rexhep Ferri, Rexhep Goçi, Rudina Xhaferi, Simon Shiroka, Sislej Xhafa, Tahir Emra, Valbona Zherka, Violeta Xhaferi, Vlada Radović, Xhevdet Xhafa, and Zake Prelvukaj.

For the opening, DJ and music producer Oda Haliti will create a live sonic environment in response to the landscapes on view, temporarily altering the relationship between the works and the exhibition space.