“The Line” Connecting Eshref Qahili’s Times and Stories

You’ll grasp that painting and drawing are processes best experienced by wandering through Galeria Qahili these days, where the exhibition “The Line – The Continuation of the Point” is on view. That painting is a multiplicity of experiences, too. The painter Eshref Qahili doesn’t spell it out in words; he unfolds it as a journey that began in Tirana in January and has now landed in Pristina. You don’t even need to read his bio to see he’s an artist who doesn’t sit idly by; a faithful servant to history and to himself. From paintings touching on the ’90s right up to today, there’s no sharp divide; there’s continuity, a measured mindset from way back.

“Some people see a colour and think, that’ll look smashing in my lounge. But that’s not the point here; something else is required. Not everyone understands the relationship between line and surface in graphic terms; however, when it comes to events as such, above all what is visible is the artist’s hand, though expressed through different themes at different times, rather than as a continuation of the same figure. Here, there is both figuration and abstraction, as well as narrative; there are events, there is subject matter,” he explained when asked how the exhibition had been received on its travels. The exhibition brings together a selection of works by Eshref Qahili, presenting him as one of the key figures in the history of Albanian art. Through the lines and forms that shape his practice, visitors encounter his unmistakable style and the themes that have occupied him over the years. Above all, the exhibition highlights his lasting and meaningful contribution to the field of visual art.

The Painter Who Kept His Style, Just Swapped Motifs

Speaking of his background, and I didn’t mention it lightly, since a stroll through Galeria Qahili reveals all, it’s one floor up from his studio, where the artist escapes the clamour to find deeper meaning in things and recreate it on the white canvas, the colour that underpins everything for him. Those visiting his exhibition at Galeria Qahili, rarer than elsewhere, can meet the painter himself, and if curiosity strikes deeper, one floor down they can explore the roots of his works: his space that speaks volumes in every corner with a painter’s traces, strikes up a proper chinwag even on everyday topics, and inevitably treats you to a coffee thick with cream from the lady of the house, Valdete, whose thoughts are just as sharp, and you come away with lessons learned.

“From sketches I’ve created large-scale paintings; I’ve explored a great deal,” he says as we wander through his pictures, which seem to breathe as one. Yet each captures its own era across three decades in paintings that span them. His sketches lay bare his draughtsman’s skill. He has omade them everywhere – cafés, on journeys, along the road. For an artist like Qahili, who continually recreates his universe, there is no fixed hour or place. His sketches are full of movement; he does not spare the space, but marks every part with his presence, shaping a harmony of motion and form.

“I haven’t changed my expression, just the motifs now and then – but not the expression,” he says. When I speak of biography, I insist that you find it along this very journey, for here the painter has placed family portraits, with kin from his mum’s and dad’s sides, bits from his “Children’s Museum” memories that are constantly reshaped in the making of a professor and painter who has travelled the world with his exhibitions.

Eshref Qahili was born in 1960 in Rahovicë, in the Presheva Valley. In 1983 he graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Pristina, and later, in 1997, completed his postgraduate studies in painting at the same academy. Since the 1990s, Qahili has held over twenty solo exhibitions and taken part in numerous group shows in Kosovo and abroad, including in England, India, Ireland, the United States, France, Italy, Cyprus, Japan, Turkey, Canada, Poland, Mexico, Romania and China.

Torture and Resistance as Messages Without Brutality

As we head towards “The Big Palette”, it’s clear the painter hasn’t spared the brush; he’s poured all his experiences onto the surface to depict the country’s darkest days, mainly wartime and just after. Even before that, the symbols of “Kosovo, my Blood that Cannot be Forgiven” hit like punches. Ants recurring as a leitmotif seem almost to crawl across the works he created in 1998, using insulating tape — an improvisation that became a defining element for years. The pre-war atmosphere in his paintings stirs with the fragility of days when violence was the headline. He’s depicted torture through artistic form in order to convey a message.

“A fragile or grim atmosphere, heavy to interpret – but I wanted to mark these events without alluding to violence’s literal sense; let each take an event differently,” he said.

The student protests aren’t left out either – those kids in their “uniforms” of peace, resisting and demanding rights. This generation, for the artist, came to be known as “The White Shadows”, a name that has since become annual, and which Galeria “Qahili” still uses today to close the celebration of a generation that creates and celebrates the present. Right with that colour, white lines, the artist manifests it in his work.

In the exhibition’s second part, a central piece strikes me as a homage to Ridvan Qazimi (4 April 1964 – 24 May 2001), known as Commander Lleshi, one of the early commanders and founders of the Liberation Army of Presheva, Medvegja and Bujanovac (UÇPMB). His brutal and treacherous killing continues to provoke unanswered questions, echoed in the painter’s work. Qahili himself had photographed the commander’s jeep. In the painting, he’s included the licence plate numbers and, using a magnifying lens, enlarged the bullet holes.

“A window smashed to bits, two other figures alive, raising doubts about who set the ambush. I’ve shown the car’s airbags like piano keys,” he went on. For me, those piano keys seal a homage to the commander’s courage and life, penned by Qahili himself, who had known him in person.

“All that perhaps I can’t explain in words, it’s the atmosphere of the world we lived in. This palette’s pitch black from pre-war,” he says.

His art has earned various national and international awards. His message is that an artist must begin from the point — and this very process is what the exhibition reveals

“It might be worth seeing an artist — a painter — who begins from the point and moves towards the painting. That should be the message. It’s not about knowing someone as a skilled craftsman who can paint well, make a good portrait, render a hand perfectly. No. An artist must begin from the point, from the beginning, from the line, from the base — and develop the idea through paper,” he has said.

For Qahili there are no stopping points; he often returns to his works, linking epochs together. A painter whom success has not altered. His universe continues to gather more light. Now is the time of all his white shadows.