Šukri is a Rom refugee expelled from Kosovo with his family after the official end of the war. He now lives in a slum in the suburbs of Požarevac, eastern Serbia. In August 2008 the entire family engaged in the building of a real house made with a malm of clay and straw, wood and recycled materials. This project reactivated their traditional skills and technical knowledge that suddenly looked valuable and indispensable once more.
The building of the house represents hope for a new sedentariness. Primarily, a hope to leave social migration, a pre condition of war, behind
and secondly an attempt to dispel a prejudice about the Roma people who, traditionally, are seen as landless nomads by definition, without a land to belong to. And yet the subject of land keeps recurring in the refugees' talks, and so it is that they are building their new houses literally, with the fabric of the land itself.
The cost for this style of building is about 150 Euro, the same price as the camera I shot the video with.
Leone Contini
Born in Florence, 1976. Contini’s art interventions are the result of a process that occurs within a specific network of relationships, within a community, and refers to areas of intercultural contact.
He studied anthropology and he borrows this tool to short-circuit spheres of common feelings and significance. His work is often not taking place in institutional art spaces.
He has exhibited in collective shows in Reload, Roma; Villa Romana, Firenze; Nosadella.Due, Bologna; Galerija Doma Omladine, Belgrade; HSF, New York; he has had solo shows in MAC,N Museum in Pistoia; Italian Cultural Institute of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
http://leonecontini.wordpress.com/