Meriton Maloku is the winning artist of the YVAA/2017 Artist of Tomorrow Award. This Award is part of the Young Visual Artists Awards program – a network of ten similar awards organized throughout Central and Eastern Europe founded in 1989 in Czechoslovakia by President Vaclav Havel and dissident artists to support the emergence and development of contemporary art and civil society.
Meriton Maloku engages in different media including prints, drawings, paintings and installation. The artist describes how he responds to politics, philosophy and art history through strategies of repetition, playfullness and humor :
“I am interested in everything I can say, but my focus is mainy on everyday life preoccupations. We are controlled by politics. We are controlled by systems that we are forced to adapt to. In all this, there are a lot of sad and funny things. And as an artist lI have a small obsession with art history, I always try and dig into it and see how artists have played with it in the past and where my practice stands within this timeline. ”
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS : 2017: “Artist of tomorrow” price, Pristina, Kosovo. Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina; “RAFA”, ASP, Katowice, Poland, Boogie Woogie Wonderland, De Lange Zaal, Antwerpe, Every day eggs, Performance, KASKA, Antwerp; RAFA- Printmaking department, Belgrade, Serbia; Closure, Installation at “Masters 2017, Department price for printmaking”, Antwerp, Belgium; “Silkroad Exhibition”, Xi’an, China AWARDS AND PRIZES” ; Guanlan Print Biennal, Guanlan, China. 2016: The new stone age, KASKA, Antwerp, Belgium; “Friday’s death announcer”’ as contributor to “Friday on your mind” by DDV, Antwerp; Onderbrokenstad, intervention, City hall, Antwerp; Friday’s death announcer,one year project for “Friday on your mind” by DDV; Friday’s death announcer as a contributor to “Friday on your mind” by DDV,Annie Gentils Gallery, Antwerp; Guanlan Print Biennal Frist selection/ publication, Guanlan, China,; Annihilation Event, Lethaby Gallery, London. 2015: Split Graphics, Split, Croatia; KOMASK Bachelor Price, KASKA, Antwerp; De Sokkel Van Teniers, Performance, KASKA, Antwerp; Gjon Mili” prize, National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina, Kosovo ; “KOMASK Bachelor Price”, RAFA, Antwerp ; Subjective Archeology, La Cambre, Brussels/ 2013/2014″ Startersprijs, KASKA Antwerp.