Gerta Xhaferaj (*1993) has been awarded the Solo exhibition prize presented by the Kunstgesellschaft Luzern. The prize consists of a solo exhibition during the 2026 zentral! annual exhibition.

The point of departure for Xhaferaj’s works are her origin and her biography. In her installation A Pause, a Rose, Something on Paper which is presented during zentral! XL, the artist deals with censorship and suppression. Three photographs are covered in bitumen, a constituent of petroleum. The application is crude and also extends beyond the frame. The original image can only be surmised, for example, the candle in a religious ritual or the artist’s car after an accident. The video consists of photographs that Xhaferaj took as a child during family celebrations in Albania. She discovered later that her father had substituted the blurred parts with photographs of his favourite flowers, clearly an attempt to enhance his daughter’s work. The title is from a poem by the American poet Lyn Hejinian which deals, among other things, with memories of childhood. The different elements thus interweave to create a dialogue about memory, history and censorship.