“It is an artwork where you can immediately jump, a topic cleared of excess decorations and brought strongly and powerfully to the public,” said the jury about the “Red in Common” video
TIRANA, Jan. 30 – Berlin-based Albanian artist Silva Agostini has been announced the winner of the Onufri 2013 international visual arts competition. A jury composed of three artists awarded Agostini the first prize for her “Red in common” video exploring the human body and the skin dividing the inner and outer part.
The jury composed of Albanian art professor and curator Zef Paci, Kosovo artist Mehmet Behluli and German photographer Jutta Benzenberg appreciated Agostini’s video for its strong link to this year’s curatorial concept on the Praise of Doubt.
The video focuses exclusively on the faces of two men with the Red in Common suggesting a kind of place which undergoes a series of opposing forces and pressure.
Born in Tirana, Agostini, 34, lives and works in Berlin where she studied art after graduating from the Academy of Arts in Tirana.
The jury’s motivation for the award of the Euro 3,500 prize was the strong feeling of the doubt/faith binomial. “If we talk about doubt what drew us more was the stage when the topic which is present within the curatorial concept, stands still and reflects tension. It is an artwork where you can immediately jump, a topic cleared of excess decorations and brought strongly and powerfully to the public. The video images interacted strongly, avoiding a somewhat light aesthetic trend,” said the jury.
Twelve artists were selected to participate in the Onufri visual arts competition which in this 20th anniversary comes as an international event focused on the ‘Praise of Doubt’ concept. The annual competition named after Onufri, Albania’s famous 16th century icon painter, is showcasing at the National Arts gallery artworks by young contemporary artists from Albania, Kosovo, Italy, France and Bulgaria.
Praise of Doubt, proposed by Italian curator Claudio Cravero for the new edition of the Onufri Prize, investigates some of the new artistic practices and areas of research, demonstrating their links to today’s changeable political situation, as a mirror of the constant doubt. In the selected artworks, doubt emerges as something that inevitably affects everybody.
Artists like Driton Selmani (Kosovo, 1987), Endri Dani (Albania, 1987) and Irgin Sena (Albania, 1982, based in New York) are “half way”, between a desire to create and build for their own countries, and a sense of delusion over former cultural and social promises. Nevertheless, in this global era of hyper-flexibility and hyper-speed, artists from Albania to Kosovo, but also from Italy to Egypt, are taking a new approach to tackle the present day. There is no particular significance to the medium employed, but rather to the in-depth search for meaning. Jasmina Metwaly (Poland, 1982, based in Egypt), Alban Muja (Kosovo, 1980), Ivi Topp (Albania, 1985, based in France) and Marzia Migliora (Italy, 1982) are torn between a political and a revolutionary era that does not seem to take them very far: it seems neither to delve into the past (in terms of nostalgia for yesteryear), but nor does it look to the future. This lack of long-term perspectives is influenced by “ghost tracks” from the remote past. Former dictatorships or various different coercive forms of politics, even though they are part of history, seem to wave from far beneath the surface.
Some of the doubts arising from Praise of Doubt comprise a sort of “free-zone”, where today’s artist condition must be defended as a ‘multidisciplinary’ and invulnerable space dedicated to freedom and transformation. This kind of “immunity” is visible in the statements by Ergin Zaloshnja (Albania, 1979), Flaka Haliti (Kosovo, 1982, based in Germany), and in the drawings by Elton Kore (Albania, 1981). In this connection, also the installations by Py Verde (Italy, 1981; France, 1986; based in Belgium) and the video by Silva Agostini (Albania, 1979, based in Germany) suggest a place subordinated by a series of tensions and forces. They reflect perseverance and extreme physical exertion, reminiscent of a type-3 lever, where the effort is applied between the fulcrum and the load.
“Praise of Doubt becomes a metaphor for being positively hesitant when we make a strong mental effort in the attempt to achieve effective, or ineffective, action.”
The exhibition featuring artworks by artists who come from Albania, Kosovo, Italy, France and Bulgaria will remain open at the National Art Gallery from December 26 until February 2, 2014.
