Exhibition, music events mark Italy’s EU Presidency

TIRANA, July 2 – The Italian takeover of EU’s rotating presidency this month is also being celebrated in Albania with a series of events organized by the Italian Institute of Culture.
“Borders: language, space, objects and people,” an exhibition curated by Martina Corgnati of the Albertina Academy of Art in Turin and featuring four artists has been launched in Tirana where contemporary artist Agnese Purgatorio showcases a dozen of artworks including a video installation.
“The Italian artist has been working on migration and illegal migration for years, systematically confronting the idea, real and figurative, of the border as a road marked by history on the alive body of geography. Agnese is especially prone of bringing back through her works, the idea and topic of ‘spaces’ which is one of the four top polarizations of the project,” organizers say.
Agostino Ferrari, Donatella Spaziani and Maria Cristina Carlini are the three other artists of the exhibition project organized by the Italian Institutes of Culture in Koln, Strasbourg, Zagreb and Tirana.
The exhibition will remain open at the Italian Institute of Culture in the Palace of Culture until August 21.
Born in Bari on 1964, Purgatorio’s success in contemporary art, in national and international level, has proved in over ten years of constant and rigorous research. She has explored, with seemingly cold eyes and clear impassibility, the world of the “portrait”, faces and characters that suggest a soft discomfort, an ambiguous reject respect the “normality”, an extraneous reality.
Earlier on this week, Albanian and Italian youth orchestras came together in Tirana to mark Italy’s takeover of EU’s rotating presidency. The concert titled “A Journey to Europe” brought European identity pieces by renowned composers such as Rossini, Haydn and Brahms.
“The Journey to Europe has a double meaning. It is clear for everybody that Albania’s destination is in Europe for its history, culture and values,” said Italian President Giorgio Napolitano during a visit to Albania earlier this year. Few days after being granted the EU candidate status the proximity to the EU becomes a reality, supported and encouraged persistently by Italy.
The second meeting of a Journey to Europe paves the way to the new commitment by Italy’s Fiesole and the Albanian youth orchestras to take young musicians performing in Brussels in front of the European Parliament to celebrate their accession to the European Federation of Youth Orchestras.