Jakup Ferri

Artist’s statement 

While I was studying (1999-2004), my city Prishtina was invisible and isolated from the western (art) world. This became an influence for my work, its content and its appearance. The awareness of the political situation; the invisibility of my country within the artworld and the alienation from western art from which art students like myself suffered, resulted in a series of videos where I dealt with this problematic case. It resulted in videos created with a certain spontaneity and desire to experiment. I reflect on them more as ‘test’ videos. I used myself as the main protagonist in these videos to establish an ironic distance to issues of cultural identity, history and the place of the peripheral artist. 

Often the videos exist of just one shot. Using my own appearance seems a necessary strategy. I show myself far away from art-history, trapped in my own house, neighborhood and my room. I wanted to challenge my own reality. Also my physical appearance distracts from the political weight and creates an imaginary space for a more universal and psychological interpretation, thus showing an absurd vision on humanity. 

In these last few years I have made extensive research about outsider artists, folk art, naive oriented painters and their engagement with different hand made materials such as blankets, carpets, glasses etc. They have been a great influence on my works. I see a great value in works that are hand made, textiles, authentic, punctual and unpolished character of this type of art. I use my associative and intuitive ability to guide the creation of my work, which may be the main similarity between my work and folk art and craft. Often I show situations where the human being is isolated from his/her surroundings. Isolation, wanting contact, wanting to be a part of something, desire and failure are all topics exposed. My inspiration comes from my direct surroundings. I use the dissension of living between two worlds involving my personal experiences. 

Over the past several years, my artistic practice has been deeply inspired by extensive research into textile traditions, including tapestry, hand-woven carpets, and diverse forms of embroidery. These techniques have had a profound influence on my work, not only in terms of material and process but also in the values they embody: the handmade, the authentic, and the unpolished qualities that resist mass production. I consider the associative and intuitive dimension of my creative process to be a crucial link between my work and the traditions of folk art and craft. 

For more than fifteen years, I have conducted research on textile histories across multiple regions, including West Africa, Haiti, Suriname, Turkey, and various countries in the Balkans. My engagement with Albania has been particularly significant, as it remains one of the few places in Europe where women continue to weave carpets by hand. Over recent years, I have visited these women repeatedly, exchanging ideas and exploring possibilities of collaboration. I was struck by the diversity of techniques employed in the making of tapestries. 

My drawings, often rendered in fine, delicate lines, depict situations in which individuals appear estranged from their surroundings. Themes of alienation, identity, and the position of the outsider recur throughout my oeuvre. Everyday practices, critical reflections on the cynicism of the art world, and memories drawn from my personal background frequently serve as points of departure. In many works, I explore the tension between isolation and the longing for connection—the desire to belong, the inevitability of failure, and the fragility of human relationships. These explorations are closely tied to my lived experience of existing between two cultural worlds, which continues to shape my artistic vocabulary. 

While my works are at times reminiscent of children’s books, folk art, and outsider art, my deeper sources of inspiration lie elsewhere—particularly in the world of microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea, as revealed under the electron microscope. My figurative paintings and embroideries often emerge from surreal drawings that intertwine scenes of everyday life with imagery of animals, acrobats, geometric structures, and utopian architectures. Within these works, poetic interactions unfold between humans, creatures, and objects. Figures and forms engage in silent dialogues, gesturing toward alternative modes of communication between species and hinting at new ways of imagining coexistence.