Europe in the future- faces of 2020

TIRANA, May.25- What will Europe of 2020 look like? This is the topic of 100 posters that have arrived in Tirana after being exhibited in many European capitals and that address this question from an artistic point of view. 23 artists from all over the world have presented their vision which sometimes is a lady of many masks over the face, a lonely wolf with stars on the neck, a growing family or a flag collection. The exhibition will be at the National Art Gallery for one month. The works have been selected form a panel of artists and come from Byelorussia, Croatia, Germany, France, Bulgaria, USA, Iran, Czech Republic, Finland, Switzerland, Turkey, etc. Some of the artists have been inspired from historical development to predict the future and some only from their imagination. Recent trends in he EU with Angela Merkel getting the leadership and Segolene Royal running for President in France have induced artist to portray Europe as a bull in charge from a naked woman, reflecting the increasing political power of women in the EU. This is the vision of Vitali P. Konstantinov, originally from Besarabia, between Ukraine, Romania and Moldova, currently living in Germany. For Savas Cekic, coming from aspiring Turkey, Europe is an aggressive wolf with a stars necklace, a position that expresses the problematic dynamics of integration for Turkey. Polish artist, Andrzej Pagowski presents a grey haired woman with 2020 masks, to portray the long history f the aging continent. Wieslaw Grzegorczyk, again from Poland plays with self-image by using a mirror of a woman. For a majority of the artists the continent is under constant change, an image reflected best at the entry when Europe is presented as a chemical reaction between many precious metals.
The idea of this exhibition was from the Croatian designer Boris Ljubicic and was supported first by the Croatian Ministry of Integration as well as the Association of designers in Croatia. Many of the interesting entries in the collection come from Eastern artists who have been observing Europe with the careful and critical eye of the outsider willing to get in.