Odeta Xheka
Working across painting, collage, and digital media, Odeta Xheka’s story parallels the highs and lows faced by women artists as they negotiate the demands of daily pressures of the family with the aspiration to make ambitious art that is both sensitive and cerebral.
She says: “As a woman, fated to be narrated rather than be the narrator, I make art to claim my voice because art is the opposite of speechlessness. Our bodies contain stories, songs and wounds that come alive with every breath. To make the body the sole focus of a creative act bent on writing the stories, singing the songs and soothing the wounds all at once is a radical act. When I am piecing together each mixed collage – labour-intensive visual narratives wrapped around heart-piercing verses by the likes of Richard Siken, Mey Swenson, Christine Sloan Stoddard, Jericho Brown, Ocean Vuong, and Nina MacLaughlin – the route I take depends on what I want the viewer to walk away feeling, given that can never be a static perspective of the body: the shame of its namelessness or its absolute wonder; the nakedness of the skin or the vested interests of the status quo; the body’s needs or its bruising; the warfare against and within itself.”