Armando Lulaj to represent Albania at Venice Biennale

The project features the artist’s conclusion of multi-year research on Albania during the Cold War and beyond such as the role of the past in the present, remembrance and the historical experience especially through “archives,” trophies and voids of the past.
TIRANA, Oct. 25 – “Albanian Trilogy: A Series of Devious Strategems” a project by Albanian contemporary artist Armando Lulaj and curated by Italy’s Marco Scotini has been selected to represent Albania in the 56th International Art exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2015. The project selected by an international jury this week features the artist’s conclusion of multi-year research on Albania during the Cold War and beyond such as the role of the past in the present, remembrance and the historical experience especially through “archives,” trophies and voids of the past. “It wears as it grows,” “Never,” and “Recapitulation” will be the three works representing Albania in the event, with the third one specially created for the Venice Biennale.
“The project was selected for its full and detailed presentation, its intelligence and conceptual force, relationship with the Albanian history and in the meantime the global history, the complex internal structure, the clarity of the curatorial vision and the support by other donors,” said the international jury headed by German art critic Boris Groys.
Some 53 countries will be participating in the 56th exhibition, which will take place from May 9 to November 22, 2015 at the Giardini and at the Arsenale and in various other venues in Venice. The title chosen by curator Okwui Enwezor for the 56th International Art Exhibition is “All the World’s Futures”
“The ruptures that surround and abound around every corner of the global landscape today recall the evanescent debris of previous catastrophes piled at the feet of the angel of history in Angelus Novus. How can the current disquiet of our time be properly grasped, made comprehensible, examined, and articulated?” asks curator Okwui Enwezor.
“Over the course of the last two centuries the radical changes have made new and fascinating ideas subject matter for artists, writers, filmmakers, performers, composers, musicians. It is with this recognition that the 56th International Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia proposes ‘All the World’s Futures’ a project devoted to a fresh appraisal of the relationship of art and artists to the current state of things,” he adds.
Armando Lulaj
Earlier this year, a video installation by Armando Lulaj was announced the winner of a visual arts competition held as part of the first book and art festival in Albania.
Lulaj was awarded the first prize for his “NEVER” work featuring the video documentation of an intervention on Mount Shpirag overlooking the southern city of Berat, switching the first two letters of the name “ENVER,” painted on the mountainside in 1968 in honour of the late dictator.
Born in Tirana, Lulaj, 34, is a writer of plays, texts on risk territory, a film author and producer of conflict images. He is a lucid and disrespectful analyst of the dispositive and mechanisms of power hidden backstage of the international claimed forms. He has no desire to rivendicate the context of local belonging; rather, he is orientated toward accentuating the border between economical power, fictional democracy and social disparity in a global context, critics say. In 2003, he founded the Debatikcenter of Contemporary Art (DCCA) to analyze the recent changes in contemporary society. Recently, Debatikcenter (DCPD) has become more of a centre for film production. Armando Lulaj has participated in dozens of important exhibitions such as the Prague Biennale (2003, 2007), Tirana Biennale (2005), the Albanian Pavilion in the 52 Venice Biennale (2007), the 4th Gothenburg Biennale (2007), the 8th Baltic Biennale of Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland (2009), the 6th Berlin Biennale (2010) and the 63` Berlinale Film Festival (2013). His work is present in important public and private collections.
Marco Scotini
Marco Scotini is an Italian art critic and independent curator. A scholar in architecture and aesthetics, he was a pupil of C. L. Ragghianti, and from 1996 to 2003, a member of the Fondazione Ragghianti of Lucca. He is the director of the Visual, Performing and Multimedia Arts Department at NABA, and curator of the Gianni Colombo Archive in Milan.
His writings have been published in magazines such as Arte e Critica, Springerin, Flash Art, Domus, Moscow Art Magazine, Brumaria, Kaleidoscope, Manifesta Journal etc. He is the director of the magazine No Order. Art in a Post- FordistSociety, developed by NABA and published by Archive Books (Berlin).