Known mostly for her unique brand of mixed media on canvas, Odeta Xheka is an artist, writer, poet, and debuting picture book creator.
Her story parallels the highs and lows that countless women artists face, as they negotiate the demands to create and procreate - the clash of daily pressures of the family with the aspiration to make ambitious art.
In recent years, alongside focusing on raising her family, Xheka has worked across painting, collage and digital media aiming to decipher the various ways that a lived reality and an emotional truth can be represented.
Her debuting picture book Here Comes Ingo is IndieReader Approved and Creative Child Magazine's Book of the Year.
Her creative nonfiction can be found at Memoir Magazine, Mutha Magazine, and Literary Mama among other online publications.
* Note to Self
Making art can feel like an act of exposure. Don't allow yourself to be restraint by conventional expectations. But also remember that just because it is your own story, that doesn't entitle you to an audience. You have to earn that.
ART PROJECTs
THE POETICS OF THE BODY journeys into an imaginal space, pushing past the realm of experience. The resulting body of work, borrowing lines from the work of some of Xheka's favorite contemporary writers - Richard Sinken, Nina MacLaughlin, Cathy Park Hong, Jericho Brown, and Ocean Vuong - remains rooted in the desire to draw out emotions in art much to the tune of Mark Leckey, Cally Spooner, and Ed Atkins' dense, poetic texts in their videos and performances.
- Visual Influences
Barbara Kruger
Raquel Van Haver
DANGLING is a series tethered but by no means static. The very physicality of the shapely legs amd the conventionally pretty face – their sensuality and weight – is offset by the seemingly effortless, floating state in which they are presented. They have the potential to revolve on their axes, providing a sense of movement and instability and implied vulnerability. They look as if they have been assembled by a machine from standardized parts, yet, they are made up of pieces, parts that can never be fitted together seamlessly. Just like life, they're full of cuts despite an effort been made for the stitching not to show and everything to appear as smooth as possible.
- Visual Influences
Paul Cézanne
Louise Bourgeois
SENTIMENT is a series of digital, multi-faceted portraits, half hidden half emerging from layers of bold color - speaking of what it is like to be forced to learn the mechanism of vanishing under the pressure of large public forces and private action; the body of work speaks of the current societal shift in re-defining gender identity and the possibility of finding love that feels inclusive, fulfilling and free of loaded expectations by purposefully borrowing from an array of art techniques.
- Visual Influences
Kim Leutwyler
Kim Jae Jun
LABELS OFF is a project of self-narrativization that builds emotional truth through a series of carefully constructed collages which are later photographed and digitally manipulated to serve as the colorful thread that connects all nuances of a woman's sense of self.
If life is the greatest form of art, it is natural to think of a woman's body as her most active and activating canvas - her body as a means of creation. What happens when all labels are torn off? When all skin's shed? When all blood's bled? How to confine one's essence within the arbitrary layers of social expectations & obligations? Let's start by taking away what's outwardly visible and see what else comes into focus given how the tale of womanhood has continually been edited into a reductive and ultimately self-sacrificial one.
- Visual Influences
Hannah Wilke
Carolee Schneemann
DROWNING DEPTHS (HOME) reflects on who gets to be the subject of the story taking place at home, who matters behind the scene, and who our compassion and interest should be directed at as a matter of both personal and political will.
A series of over familiar scenes are made to appear slightly disorienting - the bedroom, bathtub, cabinet. hallway, chair, reading nook are all too easy to recognize yet, devoid of the human presence, they issue an invitation to think carefully about who inhabits these spaces. What does one understand with "life at home" and what are the various coping mechanisms involved? What role does one play?
- Visual Influences
Agnes Martin
Louis Muhlstock
THY SELFIE speaks the language of appropriation. Referencing both neoclassical oil paintings and photography each piece reflects on the tendency of contemporary art to devour visual references indiscriminately, simultaneously paying homage to The Fragrant Rose (John William Godward, 1892), and Oranges (Artur Hill, 1880) as well as Richard Avedon's portrayal of his subjects against a white background, with no extraneous details to distract from the essential specificity of the gaze. Yet, undoubtedly, the most important point of reference is Ana Mendieta's experimental series of photographs of her face.
- Visual Influences
Ana Mendieta
Richard Avedon
CHOREOGRAPHY OF DISAPPEARANCE creates a sense of intimacy that allows the viewers to get a good look at all the longings, deceptions, and fears; it questions the very fundamentals of identity both as a female artist and a woman. Modest and profound at the same time, the artist's face photographed from different angles somehow misses a sense of the physical. There's no visible hairline, no body shape, no glimpse of the background, just picture after picture of floating collages of the artist's face that ask uncomfortable questions about different ways to represent the female essence in front of the camera as well as exploring the domains of color to depict her loneliness and isolation.
- Visual Influences
Gerhard Richter
Shadi Ghadirian Be Colourful
REMEMBRANCE wonders what it is like to be forced to learn the mechanism of vanishing under the pressure of large public forces and private action, to know how to unbind one's self from the illusion of acknowledgment and recognition, and yet, to hold on to one's own sense of authority especially as it pertains to women in the arts.
In a selection that is personal and fragmentary, it brings much-deserved attention to the work of sidelined female artists via a simple, effective, and thoroughly "female" visual language "floating" on Ukiyo-e sensibility and landing on highly textured collaged compositions.
- Visual Influences
Utagawa Hiroshige
Barbara Shaw
TRIANGULAR is a highly textured collage captured in the style of Annegret Soltau's "overstitched and sewn" photographs for whom there is no separation between art, life, and women. Via cutting, ripping, pasting, overlaying different textures and materials, this multifaceted series speaks a hybrid language - remixed, re-contextualized, and wholly build from essential fragments of lived emotional reality.
Is this series synonymous with the kitsch of love and desire (in other words, the common use of the word “romantic”) or does it stand for an explicit critique of the kind of attitude that legitimizes the logic of material constraints and power struggles that hold the subject down?
- Visual Influences
Annegret Soltau
Wangechi Mutu
THE INEFFABLE CONDITION is a series of highly textured, selectively cropped, half hidden, expressive yet free of precise detailing portraits - forms simplified into flat sections of color - create tension through the truncation of space; they dominate the whole frame, physically touching all sides, pressing close to the picture plane, almost into the viewer's space as if to ask: Can we talk about pain? Do you know how? Are you lost? Lonely? Which inner muscle of your heart is working too hard to compensate for the other muscles of your heart? Are you running on empty? Can you make it? Do you want to ask for help?
- Visual Influences
Chuck Close
Jenny Saville (early period)
BEJEWELED is a series of highly textured, multi-layered digital collages that combine traditional “fine art” making with digital media technologies in order to create a whole experience. The grist of the work is about articulating a mood, be it confusion in one, tranquility in another.
The entire creative process starts with the creation of complex paper collages made of photographs of Xheka's previous pieces. These paper collages serve as the first layer of the final image which goes through multiple digital manipulations to better represent the artist's intention to be both a storyteller and a creator.
- Visual Influences
Eric Standley
Chris Milk
GOLDEN THOUGHTS is a subtle and cerebral series capturing the tension created by overlapping and interacting areas of flat, amorphous color that emphisize the flatness of the composition. Colors, textures, surfaces, and memories grab your brain, your heart, your all in such a way that deep thinking and reflection on cultural stems from these images that offer a genuine aesthetic experience.
- Visual Influences
Color Field Painting
Meamorphism
THE TALES WE TELL is an on-going series of digital collages digging for visual clues that can unlock yet another layer of understanding in classic fairy tales such as The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, Goldielocks and the Three Bears, The Little Mermaid, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Cinderella.
- Visual Influences
Dread & Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World traveling exhibition
Conceptual Illustration
RAIN ON SKIN tries to dip the viewer into a sort of dreamlike reality. The rain seems to fall on everyone, creating evocative images where every element – the street, the sky, the inanimate characters, the viewer – is involved in a romantic and, at the same time, melancholic feeling.
“The rain washes memories off the sidewalk of life”, Woody Allen said in an old movie. This series tries to do the same. It portrays everyday rainy life as a means of escape into a dreamlike world away from the greyness and darkness of the skies that are a reminder of human isolation.
- Visual Influences
Alessio Trerotoli
John Henry Twachtman
Art Prints For Sale
Framed Artwork
Henri Matisse wants art to be "a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair.” Exploring abstraction, color field painting, abstract expressionism, and textured painting, my Framed Artwork Series invites you to add a touch of sophistication to the coziness of your home.
Unique Nursery Artwork
Art for children needn’t be complicated, however, simplicity of imagination won't do. Gift your children with unique nursery artwork that speaks to them in a relatable way. The best thing you can do for your little ones is to encourage them to express themselves through the magic of open-ended art.
Kids Fun Factory
This is where the fun begins! Simply click on FUN BUNDLES, MAGNETS&STICKERS, and WOOD SLICES to choose from a large selection of durable & weather-resistant vinyl stickers, fun animal magnets, colorful pins, holographic stickers, cushions, 2019 Picture Book of the Year and so much more to add genuine fun to your young children's learning experience as well as their surroundings.
BUNDLES of Fun!
Fun-Filled Bundles: Smart Learning
Magnets, Stickers, Holographics
Handmade Decorative Wood Slices
Picture Book
Books by Author Odeta Xheka
Best children's picture books of 2019: Here Comes Ingo is here!
Here Comes Ingo, one of the best children’s picture books of 2019, is a great example of the benefits of art in early childhood development. Here Comes Ingo is IndieReader Approved, is recognized by The National Parenting Center (Seal of Approval), is the winner of Creative Child Magazine Book of the Year (picture book category), and recipient of the Mom's Choice Gold Award.
This unique picture book encourages children to switch seats with the illustrator via painting, coloring, and drawing directly ON the page in order to tap into their creativity and let their imaginations soar. The book presents the multi-layered tale of Ingo, a scarlet macaw who drifts off to sleep while sitting on her eggs and dreams of flying into the lush tropical rainforest she calls home. While the storyline is intentionally loose, each illustration inspires a tale of its own, with the recurring opportunity to spot Ingo on each page amidst minute details unexpectedly colored in a Disney-like palette.
Learn how you can create quality time with your children through open-ended creative experiences and see for yourself why Here Comes Ingo is one of the best children’s picture books of 2019.
Selected Writing
Creative Non Fiction: Selfhood, Motherhood, The Creative Impulse
Language is power and protest, inclusion and exclusion. It communicates our deepest selves back to us, as if words were a shroud that give form to our inner world. Through language, we're allowed to bend time, jump forwads and backwards, circle back to our thoughts and memoreis picking and choosing the most meaningful to us.
Within a culture that likes things to be simple and pigeonholed, through my writing, I like to engage in complex conversations about the structure and meaning of emotional truth, while making sure to keep a firm eye on the very thin line that divides the sincerity of expression from sheer banality.
Blog: Have Child, Need Art
Beyond arts & crafts: visual literacy and the benefits of open-ended creativity
Generally speaking, art is a way to encourage the process of thinking in an innovative way and art-related activities have been proven to boost a child’s self-image by instilling a sense of pride in the self-directed project. The purpose of this blog is to encourage visual literacy and show how the joys and benefits of children's creativity go beyond mere arts&crafts:
- growth mindset
- help enrich the learning experience
- help retain information in the long run.
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