Artistic Intervention – Driton Hajredini

There is a long tradition of regarding negative events, from earthquakes to war and exile, as a divine response to human actions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all frame natural, political, social and historical disasters as punishments meted out by god for sin. Such transgression of divine law can be individual, collective or even structural, as in the case of racism, for example, or economic oppression.

Drawing on this ancient belief system, Driton Hajredini, a Muslim, entered a Catholic confessional in 2004 with a burning question on his mind: what “sin” must Kosovo Albanians have committed to be so consistently “punished”? Could being born in Kosovo be sin enough to deserve exclusion from the European Union and the restriction of movement?

And how might this sin be absolved, how might god be appeased? Eighteen years later, the political situation unchanged, Hajredini finds himself back in the confessional – on the same troubled theological ground and in the same claustrophobically circular narrative. No exit.