TIRANA, Dec. 1 – Albanian and Greek artists have come together in a joint exhibition at the Tirana Art Lab as part of a multidisciplinary project on the controversial topic of socialist heritage of the 20th century European art.
“Triple Feature # 5 is a special edition of this format, where we exhibit together the works of Albanian art collective à‡eta, Greek artist and researcher Georgia Kotretsos and Albanian artist Pleurad Xhafa,” says Tirana Art Lab, the capital’s contemporary art center.
“Tirana Art Lab wants to engage contemporary artists of younger generation into the project through the art intervention on the selected socialist era monuments. The interventions aim to stimulate public debate, initiate new interpretations and envisage the potentials of those artworks of the past,” organizers say.
The exhibition aims at visualizing and connecting these three drivers’ aesthetical approaches with à‡eta art collective bringing together artists and non-artist individuals who consciously make use of visual materials as political action, by intervening and acting on major national political and social issues through graffiti and other visual interventions in the public space. Georgia Kotretsos, a Greek artist, researcher, writer, and activist embodies an example of the “multifunctional” contemporary artist, hopping from one role and engagement to the other, while maintaining a clear boundary between them. Meanwhile, Albania’s Pleurad Xhafa’s critically engaged and investigative conceptual practice results from his personal and physical involvement with social conditions and situation, resulting in works aimed at impacting both the social and the artistic realm.
“Although the ways the artists work and apply their views may be different, all the tree artistic positions have in common an artistic practice located and well-balanced between art, social engagement and activism. Nevertheless, with this exhibition, we want to stress the relevance of the showcased works not only from the ethical and social impact but if anything their function as an autonomous work of art inside the aesthetical system,” curators say.
The newly established à‡eta Art Collective comprises a group of students, activists, and artists who in Spring 2016 began to discuss the formation of a collective to oppose the hegemonic structures of capitalism and neoliberal politics and economics in contemporary Albania.
Georgia Kotretsos is a 38-year-old Greek visual artist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
Meanwhile, Pleurad Xhafa is a 32-year-old Tirana-based Albanian visual artist and filmmaker who graduated from the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts. He is a recipient of the local “Onufri” and “Ardhje” awards in Albania.
The exhibition at the Tirana Art Lab will be open for two months from December 3 to January 28, 2017.
