Arrita Katona
– born in 1999 in Gjakova, Kosovo, studied at the University of Prishtina, and this year she started her master’s degree in Photography at FAMU. Arrita’s work explore into both personal and societal themes, with a focus on Privacy and gender perspectives. She explores these ideas through various media, mainly focusing on photography and installations. Arrita has taken part in programs at Stacion, Foundation 17’s Infrared Residency, Europe House’s Notes: Images, and MuseumsQuartier.
She also worked with media platforms like Kosovo 2.0, Service95, and viennacontemporary.
Whenever I recall a memory, it always comes with a soundtrack playing in the background. That’s how I remember most of my childhood, with my cousins dancing in my room, a room blending postmodern and Balkan aesthetics while the Moody Blues or Patti Smith Vinyl would be spinning on the record player.
I was born and raised in Gjakova, later I moved to Prishtina to pursue my Bachelor’s in Graphic Design at the University of Prishtina-Faculty of Arts. I have always had an interest in art, photography and graphic design. I remember as a kid when I found out about photoshop I started immediately using it as a tool for creating designs and images where later on I started publishing them on tumblr, a platform that influenced me a lot during my early teens and also later on. It was during that time that I used the internet as a tool to gain knowledge on art, music and explore my identity.
During my university years, I used to hang out with local bands, which led me to documenting Pristina’s underground music scene and youth culture. This experience deepened my interest in photography and documentation, ultimately leading me to pursue a Master’s degree in Photography at FAMU in Prague. Growing up in Kosovo and engaging with its contemporary art scene instilled in me a sense of responsibility to contribute to conversations around human rights, identity, and personal space, such topics that are increasingly relevant in our rapidly changing society123.
One of my first showcased works was a series of bodyscape photographs, in which I explored the human body in an intimate, textural way, capturing intricate details that mirror the beauty of nature. I intentionally obscured the face in these compositions, creating anonymity and allowing viewers to interpret emotions through movement. This work was rooted in the concept of escapism and later evolved into an exploration of privacy, specifically, privacy as a fundamental human right, essential for personal freedom. 456
In today’s digital age, privacy extends beyond physical spaces to include personal data, online identity, and surveillance concerns. The rise of social media, artificial intelligence, and mass data collection has made privacy more vulnerable than ever.
For creators like me, privacy is not only a personal concern but also a subject for critical discourse, examining how visibility, representation, and agency shape public and private identities. Whether in photography, branding, or editorial work, navigating these boundaries is crucial in maintaining control over one’s narrative and resisting the exploitation of personal or collective images. 78910
In 2020, during the Infrared Residency, I participated in my first collective exhibition centered on human rights. It was here that I began exploring privacy in depth, presenting an installation titled “Interrogation Room”11. This work was a personal experiment, crafted with specific materials to examine audience responses to privacy and societal power structures. “Interrogation Room” is a minimal installation—a cube constructed from one-way mirrors. In this work, I explore privacy through cultural traditions and collective societal norms, juxtaposing them with the privacy challenges imposed by technology, social media, and data accessibility. These elements coexist, often eroding one another, raising questions about privacy’s continuity and its evolving nature. By exposing different perspectives on privacy rights, the installation creates a duality, inviting reflection on both individual and collective experiences.
Privacy remains central to my practice, heavily influenced by thinkers like Michel Foucault and Shoshana Zuboff. I investigate how privacy functions on a psychological level within society and how escapism shapes our relationship with it. My work challenges audiences to reconsider their own experiences with privacy and its broader societal implications.
The politics of visibility are inherently gendered, shaped by historical and contemporary systems that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and who is granted the right to remain unseen. Women and marginalized communities have long been subjected to surveillance, whether through patriarchal control, media objectification, or digital exploitation, while their autonomy over self-representation remains contested.
Gender imbalances further complicate this discourse, as exposure is rarely neutral; it is dictated by systems that render certain voices more vulnerable than others. The persistent policing of women’s bodies, whether in public or digital spaces, reflects deeper mechanisms of control, reinforcing the notion that visibility can be both a tool of empowerment and a site of oppression. In this context, escapism emerges not as mere withdrawal, but as an act of defiance, a refusal to conform to imposed narratives, a reclamation of agency, and a reimagining of alternative spaces where autonomy is possible.
As I navigate these themes in my own work, I find myself constantly questioning the politics of privacy, how visibility can be both empowering and exposing, how erasure can be both protective and silencing. Who controls the gaze? Who gets to tell my story, and on whose terms? These questions are not just theoretical; they shape the way I approach my art, my image, and the spaces I choose to exist in.
For me, privacy is not about retreating, it’s about reclaiming. It’s about resisting the structures that dictate how I should be seen or who I should be for others. Through my work, I want to challenge these power dynamics, to disrupt the expectations imposed on women’s bodies, identities, and narratives. Art gives me a way to carve out space beyond these structures, a space where I decide what is revealed, what is withheld, and what possibilities exist outside of the confines that seek to define me.
Photography remains my primary medium, often interwoven with installations. Inspired by Susan Sontag and Walter Benjamin, I incorporate ideas of blurriness and photographic abstraction to further interrogate the limits of visibility and perception. In my recent work I addressed the blurred boundaries between public and private spheres in an era of mass digital exposure. The overexposure of personal lives, driven by social media and surveillance, has rendered privacy increasingly rare.
Through the use of blurry images, I aimed to reflect on this tension, creating a visual language that disrupts clarity and forces the viewer to pause and question what is being obscured. Blurriness, in this context, acts as a form of resistance, a deliberate act of withholding information. It mimics the protective barriers we attempt to construct around our private lives, shielding personal spaces from invasive scrutiny. By presenting images in an indistinct manner, my work challenges the voyeuristic tendencies cultivated by the digital age, emphasizing the fragile boundaries we struggle to maintain around our identities. In this way, the blurry image becomes a metaphor for reclaiming control, what is private should not always be easily accessible. A crucial part of this project was a zine featuring a series of images printed on transparent material. There is something inherently significant about using transparency, it always brings me back to the one-way mirror in my work, the “Interrogation Room” and the power dynamics it represents. This choice of material reinforces the themes of visibility, accessibility, and the intricate layers of contemporary privacy, highlighting the tension between what is seen, what is hidden, and who controls the act of looking.
Exploring this topic is essential to me because it continues to evolve and becomes more defined, particularly in the context of protecting one’s own image. As I reflect on the intersections of privacy, identity, and representation, I am increasingly drawn to the idea that art can act as a catalyst for deeper societal introspection. By questioning how we navigate personal boundaries and public exposure, my work seeks to spark conversations that are both urgent and necessary.
1Arrita Katona, Bathub, 2022, photography, Prishtina/Kosovo, May 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
2Arrita Katona, Bathub, 2022, photography, Prishtina/Kosovo, May 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
3Arrita Katona, Bathub, 2022, photography, Prishtina/Kosovo, May 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
4Arrita Katona, AS PRIVACY ERODES, ESCAPISM OFFERS AN EXILE, 2024, photography/installation, MUSEUMQUARTIER | VIENNA , August 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
5Arrita Katona, AS PRIVACY ERODES, ESCAPISM OFFERS AN EXILE, 2024, photography/installation, MUSEUMQUARTIER | VIENNA , August 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
6Arrita Katona, AS PRIVACY ERODES, ESCAPISM OFFERS AN EXILE, 2024, photography/installation, MUSEUMQUARTIER | VIENNA , August 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
7Arrita Katona, FAMU EXHIBITION, CONSPIRACY, 2025, photography/installation, STANICE6 PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC, January 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
8Arrita Katona, FAMU EXHIBITION, CONSPIRACY, 2025, photography/installation, STANICE6 PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC, January 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
9Arrita Katona, FAMU EXHIBITION, CONSPIRACY, 2025, photography/installation, STANICE6 PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC, January 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
10Arrita Katona, FAMU EXHIBITION, CONSPIRACY, 2025, photography/installation, STANICE6 PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC, January 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
11Arrita Katona, INTERROGATION ROOM, March 2025, installation, FOUNDATION 17. Courtesy of the artist.
12Arrita Katona, INTERROGATION ROOM, March 2025, installation, FOUNDATION 17. Courtesy of the artist.
