Ilenia

The sacrilege of “Redemption Request I” starts in the name. The presentation of paintings and sculptures — the first solo exhibition by Swiss-Kosovan artist Azize Ferizi in the United Kingdom — presupposes the notion that one should be able to submit a form for one’s own salvation, creating the conditions for an environment from which authority is absented and bodies become metaphorical sites for exploration.

The imposition of the paintings, six oils created in the artist’s typically two-dimensional, figurative, sallow and modestly impastoed style — is a moral, perhaps even religious, progress. Flanking the walls of the gallery and spaced equally, the paintings convey obfuscated glimpses at “the restrained body,” per Ferizi, exploiting archetypes and toying with perspective, whether through the effect of cropping, flattening, or the strategic deployment of nudity.

Ferizi views the sculptural group Madonna-Whore Complex, 2023 as a site-specific work and cites the importance of allowing the quasi-identical “entities” to “find narratives within the space,” that is, to seem to interact organically and in dialogue amongst themselves and their surroundings. Billowing sheets of canvas stiffened with layers of rabbit skin glue and oil paint shroud anthropomorphic metal skeletons which appear as if to wander. Arising in the face of the multiple, and at times contradictory, connotations of the veiled body is the compounded, “impossible” figure of the Madonna-Whore, a unique trope which suggests a body that is defined by the way it does and does not look in others’ eyes; one whose covered nature simultaneously exalts modesty and decoration; one to whom the veil is both a fashion and a cloak of invisibility.

Among the opaque, ritual-driven details of Ferizi’s work, “Redemption Request I,” is overall fraught with the tension of holding both painting and sculpture in a single breath.

– Olamiju Fajemisin

Azize Ferizi (b.1996, Fribourg) is a Swiss-Kosovan artist who lives and works in Geneva and Paris. Ferizi gained her master’s degree at HEAD, Geneva and has exhibited internationally, with recent solo presentations including Changing Rooms, Lovay Fine Arts (2023); Basel Social Club, Cherish (2023); SIS IS HARDCORE, Cherish, Geneva (2020). Recent group shows include “Living in a Magazine World”, 032c, Paris (2023); Meet Me Halfway, LiveInYourHead, Geneva (2022); Chemical X, Cherish, Geneva (2022); Nour El Ain, Karma International, Zürich (2021); Lemaniana, Reflection on Other Scenes, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2021); Weaving Home, Limbo, Geneva (2020); Nouveaux Sacrés, Voiture 14, Marseille (2019). Azize Ferizi is the laureate of the Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Art Prize (2022); The Theodore Stravinsky Prize (2021); Ducastel Prize (2020).