TIRANA, Dec. 21 – Kosovo-born artist and activist Alketa Xhafa announced her latest art installation – Even Walls Have Ears – which will be exhibited at the National History Museum. This project is brought by the AIDSSH and UNDP missions in Albania as part of the kick-off event Remembrance to Heal and Prevent.
For the project, Xhafa will be traveling throughout Albania encouraging people to share their memories and stories of life under the communist regime of Enver Hoxha. Quotes from these stories will be projected on buildings and monuments, turning the landmarks into creation spaces. The art idea will be used as a means of initiating an all-inclusive dialogue about the country’s still prevailing traumatic past.
The images displayed during the project’s presentation in Tirana were visual examples of what is to come. These projections were quotes from martyrs, living and passed, and were projected on some of Tirana’s most famed national landmarks.
Some of them were: But Where Were You O God, a line from musician Sherif Merdani’s song Kenda e Nà«nà«s (Mother’s Song), displayed on Korca’s Theatre; Live to Tell, by Zef Plummi, Franciscan Priest and Memoirist, on the National Historical Museum; Make Sure that the Police Don’t Find my Poems! Save Them, and Me!, by Visar Shiti, writer, poet and Albanian Ambassador to the Vatican, displayed on Durres’ Prefecture.
Curator and founder of Art Kontakt, Andi Tepelena, joined the Balkan Artists’ Guild to produce what is mainly an awareness campaign consisting of project installations throughout the country, a book and a documentary in English.
The project will support the ongoing work to provide documentation of and commemoration for the victims who physically and/or psychologically suffered in the hands of the communist regime due to their religious or political beliefs, in the years of 1944-1990s.
These public image projections throughout the now-democratic country in the spring of 2018 will allow people to publish and read all the things they were once not allowed to express. The walls of today will serve as canvases where living memories can be displayed and the healing process can begin.
Alketa Xhafa Mripa is a conceptual artist and activist. She spent her childhood in Kosovo and later studied Fine Art and History of Art in London. Starting off with a student status, Xhafa became a refugee once the war in Kosovo broke out in 1998-1999.
Since then, her multi-disciplinary work has been featured in numerous exhibitions across Europe, including metropolitan cities like Berlin, London, Rome, and even her native Kosovo. The art installation that gave her wide recognition in her country was the art installation titled Thinking of You – a project aiming to pierce the silence concerning wartime rape.
The information for this story was taken from tracesproject.org and from Kristale Rama’s, founder of Artists’ Guild and Xhafa’s partner for this art installation, Facebook page.
