Free legal advice at The Flat

Free legal and other advice for local women at The Flat

(Manifesta 14 Prishtina venue no. 23), Shaip Spahia Street, Apt. Nr. 2, 10000 Prishtina, Kosovo 

Every Monday from 1 August to 30 October 2022, 12.00-18.00 

Any woman, or a person who identifies as one, is welcome to use the advisory services free of charge on a drop-in basis. No booking is necessary. Full discretion and anonymity is guaranteed. All advisors have many years of experience dealing with various topics relating to women’s rights. There is also an option for referral to specialist support organisations.  

See schedule below for details. 

About the Sister Flats project

Rows of identical houses are a common sight in Kosovo. Known as “brother houses” they bear witness to the strength of family bonds and to a performative equality and solidarity – among men.

Sisters are seldom included either in this practice or the family inheritance, thus ensuring their financial dependence on fathers, brothers, husbands and sons.

Sister Flats invites us to imagine how things could be different, how wealth and power could be distributed justly, and the structures of oppression dismantled. Developed in dialogue with Kosovar feminist activists, Alicja Rogalska’s project proposes sisterhood as the place to start.

Borrowing from immersive theatre, escape rooms and ethnographic museums, the artist sets her enquiry within the domestic sphere. The site of much gendered oppression, it may also hold within it the key to emancipation. On Mondays, when the space is closed to the general public, it will be used for legal advice sessions for local women.

About the advisors:

Xhulieta Devolli, Senior Project Manager and Gender-based Violence Consultant – Network of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian Women Organizations in Kosovo (RROGRAEK), ex-National Advisor on Women and Children’s Rights and Gender focal point of Human Rights Department at the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.

Leonida Molliqaj, Project Manager, founder, and director of The Center for Information, Critique, and Action (QIKA). She has previously worked as an investigative journalist. Her work focuses on gender inequality, corruption, and social issues. She has seven-plus years’ experience gathering, sorting and analysing data on these issues that were used for several open data platforms.

Riola Morina, Researcher at QIKA. She is a student of English Language and Literature at the University of Prishtina as well as of Political Science at the University of Business and Technology (UBT), Prishtina. She has expertise on project coordination due to her experience working at the Office for Investment and Business Support in Kamenica. Her work interests are mainly focused on human rights and social issues.

Iliriana Jaka Gashi is a medical doctor with a master’s degree in Healthcare Management from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and acts as the Executive Director of Kosova – Women 4 Women (K-W4W). Currently, she serves on the Boards of two organizations: the Network of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian Women’s Organizations of Kosovo (RROGRAEK), and the CiviKos Platform.She is a member of the International Soroptimist Club in Prishtina.

Arrita Rezniqi, Program Manager at Kosovo Law Institute (KLI) and Coordinator of the Free Legal Aid Center of KLI. She leads a team of lawyers providing free legal aid to vulnerable groups in Kosovo in criminal, civil, administrative, and minor offence cases, in order to provide equal opportunities to them regarding access to justice. At the same time, Arrita leads the Education Program at KLI, where young lawyers are trained and pursue a Legal Clinic Program.

Besa Sanaja – Holds a Master of Arts in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Positive Psychotherapy – Worldwide Association for Positive and Transcultural Psychotherapy (WAPP) in Prishtina. She is now working for the Kosova – Women for Women organization as a psychologist and offers psycho-social support and psychological ways to well-being for women in danger and survivors against the violence. She is also working as a psychologist  in the “Shtëpia e Sigurt” shelter while treating victims of family and gender-based violence, focusing on mothers and their children.

About the artist:

Alicja Rogalska is an interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin and London and working internationally. Her practice is research-led and focuses on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday. She mostly works in specific contexts making situations, performances, videos and installations in collaboration with other people to collectively search for emancipatory ideas for the future.

Rogalska’s work for Manifesta 14 is commissioned and co-produced by Urbane Künste Ruhr and Manifesta 14.