By Nastasia Peteuil
Tirana, April 26 – Crowns of barbed wire, a crushed metal sheet, axle bearings, these are the only remains of Fatos Lubonja’s lifetime in prison at Spa箠Famous writer and journalist Fatos Lubonja decided to show his past through the exhibition “Spa笠People-Things” at the EU info Centre of Tirana from April 24th to May 30th.
Seventeen years of prison during Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship is not easily forgettable. From 1974 to 1991, Fatos Lubonja remained a political prisoner. He was released only when the USSR collapsed.
When he decided to go back to Spa硷ith the photographer Barbara Hausammann, Lubonja did not know what to feel. Walking through the remains of the prison, Fatos Lubonja started to collect objects that were the most evocative of his memories. From that day, the 63 year-old artist decided to make a commemorative installation. Though Fatos Lubonja is better known as a writer or a journalist, this time words were not enough to tell his stories.
“I picked things that have a story because I wanted to bring out my memories,” commented Fatos Lubonja. And to do so, the artist has mixed three different arts: photography, materials and words seem to be supplementary to each other. During this one month exhibition, Fatos Lubonja invites visitors to walk in his steps through his memories but he also pushes people to move along these remains of Spa箠”I made this exhibit for two reasons I think. First, it is a communication with myself, a sort of therapy of what I lived during all these years at Spa箠But I don’t want to live it alone and I need to share my stories with people. We are part of the same society,” explained the artist.
For the artist, this exhibition “brings a new aspect of drama”, and he added that “by doing this exhibition, I give a sense to my life but, at the same time, it makes alive what my friends and I lived”. Behind each piece of metal there is a story, a life, a man. Through the exhibition, the artist thinks about “all of my friends who did not escape and died without having the possibility to find themselves.”
With this work, Fatos Lubonja reminds Albanian society of the importance of the duty of remembrance. However, he also underlined the wrong approach of Albania toward its past. “Our past gets instrumentalized by the power of today,” said the artist. “We need to have a humanist approach of this period and not try to manipulate people with it.”
Fatos Lubonja is clearly critical regarding the political system, saying that “they are making the same mistakes because it is still the same culture”. The artist praises a humanist approach to deal with this heavy past. That seems to be the only way to set up a necessary duty of remembrance that Albania must promote to avoid the mistakes of its past and, at the same time, to carry out a real democracy.
