Alketa Xhafa Mripa was born to parents of Albanian descent in Pristina, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Kosovo) in 1980. In 1997 she moved to London to study Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins and became a refugee when war broke out in her homeland in 1998. Experimenting across a range of media and art forms, including film, installation, painting and photography, Mripa's widely exhibited projects promote issues around women’s liberation and independence, social justice and community participation.
Conceptual artist Alketa Xhafa Mripa was born to parents of Albanian descent in Pristina, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Kosovo) in 1980. She moved to London in 1997 to study Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins (now a constituent college of the University of the Arts London) and subsequently became an asylum seeker when the Kosovo war broke out a year later. Experimenting across a number of media and art forms, including film, installation, painting, performance and photography, Mripa’s art promotes issues relating to women’s liberation and independence, giving an insight into ‘the reductionist behavior of oppressive societies’ (artist’s website). Her strong ties to feminism and her experience as a mother have brought a greater responsibility to her role as an artist; her work, for the most part, involves vulnerable communities of women, including female survivors of sexual violence and wartime rape who still face deep-rooted stigma. Mripa gained wider recognition for her art installation Thinking of You (2015), in which a football stadium in Pristina, Kosovo, became her 'canvas'. She 'painted' it with thousands of female dresses and skirts pegged to washing lines in a powerful tribute to survivors of sexual violence, aiming to pierce the silence surrounding wartime rape.
Collaboration and participation are essential to Mripa's work. She likes to involve other communities and she strongly believes that her art has more value when others take an active role in it. An example of the collaborative meaning-making process emerging through her work was her mobile installation Refugees Welcome (2016), commissioned by Counterpoints Arts, London (a leading British arts organisation focussed on migration and cultural change, supporting and producing creative projects by and about migrants and refuge) in which Mripa sought to recreate the welcoming feeling she herself experienced when she was new to England. She transformed the inside of a 1970s truck into a welcoming space for individuals to share their own experiences of how refugees should be welcomed. Visitors were invited to climb inside, sit down and have a conversation with the artist about the refugee crisis or, if they were refugees themselves, to tell their story. They could also write their thoughts down in a leather-bound diary that sat open on the table. Mripa created an environment that served as both a reminder of the dramatic side of the refugee experience and as an invitation to imagine a brighter future. The truck travelled around the country, including being installed at the Solidarity with Refugees march in London (by sheer coincidence, on the day following the UK's referendum on EU membership in June 2016), at the British Museum's Islamic Room and in the Who Are We? project at Tate Modern (2017). In October 2016 Mripa participated in the Art for Social Change retreat hosted by Counterpoint Arts at Dartington Hall in Devon, the location itself a haven for a cohort of creative refugees who fled Nazi-occuppied Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In her video Britain is Still Speaking (2018), premiered at the Victoria & Albert Museum during Refugee Week, Mripa wanted to demonstrate that Britain had not finished speaking despite the Brexit slogan ‘Britain has spoken’. The idea expressed in the video was that, despite the sentiment against refugees around the world, there was still solidarity among the British people for refugees in need.
Mripa founded the non-profit community group Justice Through Arts with the aim of raising awareness on various social issues and injustices through public art. The group has created projects addressing specific topics and has proposed critical interventions within existing social systems that inspire community participation and implement social exchange. In one of these projects (2020), carried out in collaboration with different artists and with community participation, Mripa produced two murals in West Hampstead (her own north west London neighbourhood) drawing attention to the reality of homelessness in the UK. The project was inspired by the memory of bookseller John – who had his spot on the same bridge which now housed the mural, and was a beloved member of the community – and his dog Sugar.
Alketa Xhafa Mripa continues to live and work in London, England. She has participated in exhibitions across Europe, including in Germany, France, UK, Italy, Portugal, Austria, and her native Kosovo. Her work is not currently held in any UK public collections.