Albania at Venice Biennale with “Potential monuments of unrealized futures”

TIRANA, May 22 – In a pavilion exploring how modern architecture in Albania is inhabited, transformed, rejected, modified and absorbed, two contemporary artists will be representing Albania in the 14th international architecture exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Edi Hila and Adrian Paci are participating with the “Potential Monuments of Unrealized Futures” exhibition which aims at developing a new point of view on the Albanian cities and to invent new aesthetics to dwell the unfinished traces of Modernist architecture that are disseminated in the urban fabric and in the countryside of the Albanian territory.
“This is not a didactic exhibition of the movements in Albanian architectural history, it is not an encyclopedic catalogue of Albanian architecture, rather the pavilion provides the occasion to develop a standpoint to understand Albanian architecture today,” said Jonida Turrani and Stefano Rabolli Pansera, the curators of the Albanian pavilion.
“Through a multimedia exploration of modernism, the artists weave real and constructed references, past and present, fictional stories, and form readings of such buildings beyond the traditional lexicon of architectural representation,” added the curators.
The artists’ will is to “suggest an ‘Archaeology of Modernism’ that will allow us to recognize and reveal the hidden modernisms of the city beyond the entropic condition of the contemporary cities. Through a series of artistic narratives, the exhibition aims to identify and reveal the several interrupted paths of modernisms in order to inform new strategies to think and inhabit the contemporary city.
Born in Shkodra, Edi Hila, 70, has a career that spans across several decades, having managed to survive political disillusion, persecution and censorship throughout. The ’70s were a difficult period for the artist, having been restrained from producing art under communism. The Albanian transition to capitalism has been equally challenging in many ways as it emerges in the latest work focusing on the urban conditions and on the socio-cultural dynamics of late capitalism.
Meanwhile, Adrian Paci is an internationally renowned artist born in Shkoder in 1969. A considerable part of the work of Adrian Paci is dedicated to the theme of loss, abandonment of his land to deal with the new realities. Argument developed from the experience of migration, expressed through the story of memory, current topic and universal, embracing the conditions of all emigrants.
The Albanian pavilion will be on display from June 7 to November 23 at the Arsenale, Venice.
The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, titled Fundamentals will feature 66 national participations.
“Fundamentals consists of three interlocking exhibitions – Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014, Elements of Architecture and Monditalia – that together illuminate the past, present and future of our discipline. After several architecture Biennales dedicated to the celebration of the contemporary, Fundamentals will look at histories, attempt to reconstruct how architecture finds itself in its current situation, and speculate on its future,” organizers say.
Back in 2012, new modern approaches to art and architecture represented Albania in its second participation at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Concepts of cultural heritage and town planning led through some of the most important sites in Korca, Berat, Tirana, and Shkodra were displayed to the public in Venice.