Artistic Intervention – Majlinda Hoxha

Majlinda Hoxha has been looking behind the façade of the Grand Hotel Prishtina since 2016. A repository of her country’s history and a microcosm of its society, the hotel has become one of the artist’s central preoccupations.

Over and over again, she has returned to the building. Drawn to its uncanny liminality, she has traversed its hallways and entered its rooms, speaking at length to the people who work there. She has delved into the archives, traced the vicissitudes of life inside and outside its walls and recorded some of its more recent shifts in state. For the first time, she is presenting the results of her research.

In one cycle of photographs, Hoxha documents the hotel’s once illustrious collection of paintings, tapestries, prints and sculptures. Installed in the very places where the works once stood or hung, they serve as surrogates for the collection that was. Portraits of workers comprise the second cycle of photographs. Their stories can be heard throughout the hotel.