Kosovo (Republic of)

Brilant Milazimi’s new work is anchored by a 17-metre-long landscape painting depicting a line of figures standing closely, one behind the other, across mountains reminiscent of Kosovo’s rural terrain. Echoing historical processions – from religious narratives to war-driven displacement – this panoramic installation gathers frail bodies lingering in the landscape. Mounted on a structure designed by LANZA within the church of Santa Maria del Pianto, the work invites close looking.

The installation’s scale reveals the quiet yet violent toll of deferral: numbness settles into skeletal frames. Throughout the church, other figures appear and extend the scene beyond the central work. Weakened yet upright, Milazimi’s figures do not rest or drift in thought. They persist and wait, teeth tightly clenched. What they are waiting for is never named. This suspension – of time, of destination – is the subject itself. For decades, Kosovars have lived within a condition of indeterminacy shaped by political transition, contested recognition and the unfinished bureaucracies of sovereignty. Here, lines and queues are lived structures – organizing daily life, movement and expectation. Hard Teeth distils this reality into a visual language that gives form to the physical and psychological strain of endurance without resolution.