Lek M. Gjeloshi

At the foot of Kosovo’s Accursed Mountains lies the Visoki Deçani monastery. Founded in the first half of the fourteenth century, the Serbian Orthodox religious site is famous for its frescoes.

They depict the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and were completed by an unknown painter in 1530. The renown of the frescoes stems less from their art-historical significance, however, than from an intriguing mystery in their midst.

The source of the mystery are two unusual figures situated to the left and the right of the Messiah’s head. While art historians read the figures as mere personifications of the sun and the moon, each turning away from the suffering Christ in horror and pity, a number of scientists – of some repute – view the figures as UFOs.

For them, the fresco contains incontrovertible evidence of alien existence; conspiracy theories abound. What do the heavenly bodies tell us? Lek M. Gjeloshi’s video installation looks at the so-called moon – and right into the heart of the mystery.   

Lek M. Gjeloshi (1987, AL) is an Albanian artist who now lives and works in Shkodër, Albania. His multimedia practice explores the alienating effects of spaces in limbo.

His work has been shown in several solo exhibitions and institutions, including Villa Romana, École Nationale des Beaux Arts de Lyon, Stacion Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina, Kunsthalle West, Bazament Art Space, Autostrada Biennale, Manifattura Tabacchi, Zeta Gallery, National Gallery of Arts in Albania and Civic Gallery of Shkodër, among others. In 2018 he was artist-in-residence at Residency Unlimited in New York.