The bride of Mitrovica 2017

Gazmend Freitag made this drawing, *The Bride of Mitrovica,* in 2017 using ink on paper, and it looks like he did it pretty fast. I can imagine Freitag standing there, quickly sketching in brown ink, trying to capture a memory. He’s making lines, cross-hatching to create shadows, smudging and moving the ink around. The bride on her donkey is central, but the man leading the donkey is kind of wonderful with his stripy pants. You can see how the ink bleeds and pools in places, giving it that sense of immediacy. I wonder if Freitag was thinking about other artists who captured fleeting moments like Daumier or Goya. This drawing has that same raw quality, like a snapshot of a moment in time. It feels like he wanted to capture the essence of this scene, the feeling of a wedding procession rather than a detailed portrait. It's like he's saying, "Here, look at this. This is something real, something human." And that’s what makes it so powerful. It's a small drawing, but it speaks volumes.