A stunning mural featuring a medley of cubes and symbols, painted on a backdrop of red and blue, now graces the Swansea Recreation Center, on the wall next to the swimming pool. It’s more than a colorful addition to the building — it’s the work of a group of artists from Kosovo who joined forces with local artists to show the power of reconciliation and kinship.
The work is the result of the Colorado-Kosovo Culture and Art Exchange, which brought artists who identify as Albanian, Muslim, Christian, Hispanic, Kosovar, American and Mexican together to create murals, both in Swansea and in Boulder.
For two weeks in July, Colorado artists painted side by side with six artists from Kosovo. The artists captured their differences and similarities through bright swaths of color on the walls of the recreation center and around the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. One cube on the mural at the recreation center featured a mosque on one side (more than 90 percent of Kosovo’s population identifies as Muslim), praying hands on the other and a dove on the top — showing that while the artists’ religions may be different, peace is what they all hope for.
The first part of the exchange took place last May, when 11 Colorado artists traveled to Viti, Kosovo, to paint murals and connect with the art community there. The artists from Kosovo planned to visit at the end of last summer, but visa difficulties due to the refugee crisis kept them from coming until this July.
The Colorado-Kosovo Culture and Art Exchange is a rebirth of a mural exchange project between artists from the Western Slope and Kosovo in 2005 and 2006, organized by the New Hope Church in Rifle to create a mural in Kosovo. Mary Wade, one of its participants, organized the American side of the exchange after a friend in Kosovo she met on that trip reached out on Facebook about starting up the project again in October 2014.
“Often with projects like these, the U.S. goes to countries and says, ‘You need this, we’re going to do this for you,’ as opposed to people being like, ‘Hey, come to us, please do this!’ ” Wade said. “So I really felt like it was an opportunity I couldn’t say no to.”
Wade reignited the exchange, hoping to bring awareness to Colorado about Kosovo, a country born from the end of the Balkan wars in 1999. Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, and the U.S. recognizes it as a country, even though the European Union still does not.
With the mural exchange, the artists aimed to create beauty, encourage empathy and foster reconciliation through public art and community investment. Mervan Mustafa, the leader of the artists from Kosovo, said through a translator, Lonnie Alija, that the positive responses from both communities surprised him.
“The project sends a very powerful, positive message when it comes to local and global issues,” he said. “We want to tell the world, ‘Look at us, we’re a group of people so different in culture, language, religion and backgrounds and we’re coming together and creating something beautiful.'”
“We’re working together in peace, we don’t understand each other most of the time, but we’re still creating something beautiful and peaceful. And it’s possible — you really can do it.”
Wade said one of her friends described art as “a porous boundary where people can connect and overcome their differences,” where differences like language, culture, religion and history are put aside for the sake of creating. She likes how this description applies to the Colorado-Kosovo project.
“There’s a lot of bad news right now, and people are very aware of evil, and the positive response to this project stems from the fact that it’s something hopeful, something beautiful and I think our country really craves hope,” she explained.
When Wade first began organizing the trip, she never imagined that she would be bringing six artists from Kosovo to the U.S. — the challenges of obtaining visas for the artists seemed insurmountable at times, she said. One artist’s application was rejected, then the rejection was revoked. But for Wade, the tense atmosphere today just made her more determined to see the project though. She believed people needed to hear the message sent through the mural exchange — that Muslims and Christians can work together, and invest in a neighborhood — all the more.
“The world revolves around relationships and projects like this change people’s relational patterns,” she said. “It changes how you think of Muslims permanently, how you think of artists, how you think of kids from Swansea and St. Charles.”
Another significant part of the mural exchange project was the cultural and professional dialogue between the artists. The artists chatted online about ideas before the trip and swapped techniques with one another upon arriving, as well as cultural habits that sometimes baffled the others. Wade laughed when she recounted a story about how she brought the artists coffee one morning. The Americans took their coffees in one hand and kept painting with the other, but the artists from Kosovo sat down for 30 minutes to chat.
“Americans take coffee to keep going, but Albanians take coffee to stop going,” she said as Mustafa nodded in agreement.
Donations from businesses in Colorado and Kosovo made the project possible, and Wade is confident after the immensely positive feedback from the communities the artwork serves that she can put together a second team of new artists for another exchange. She doesn’t know if that’s how the Colorado-Kosovo Culture and Art Exchange will continue, but she knows that the project won’t end here.
Mustafa said participating in the project inspired him to lead more international art exchanges with his team in the future. The artists from Kosovo are currently working on bringing their art to French museums for display, but it was a dream come true to visit America.
“We knew when we came here that we were going to find amazing and kind people, and just by being here, we confirmed all of that — that Americans are really nice people and very welcoming to our group,” he said. “It really motivated us to just strengthen our relationships as two nations.”
