North Macedonia (Republic of) 2026

Title: Pietà in the Emergency Blankets
Commissioner: Avni Qahili
Curators: Tihomir Topuzovski, Amanda Boetzkes
Exhibitor: Velimir Zernovski

The installation challenges the boundaries of the human, looking beyond them to imagine new ethical sensibilities. Michelangelo’s Pietà is wrapped in golden emergency blankets, its familiar form re-clothed to generate new layers of meaning. Emergency becomes a catalyst for transformation. The focus shifts away from the human figure towards fragile relationships, uncertain futures and shared conditions of vulnerability.

Originally developed for space missions, emergency blankets have become powerful visual symbols of the victims of global inequality, war and conflict, and environmental destruction. The sculpture transforms contemplation into an ethical response, forging connections with the multiple crises shaping our present. The blankets establish a connection between viewers and those living through states of emergency, giving visibility to experiences of exile, displacement, fractured relationships, trauma and death.

Gold envelops the figures in the emotional landscape of our time, encompassing passion, vulnerability and suffering. Monumentality gives way to provisionality, reflecting a world in which stability and a sense of belonging are increasingly fragile.