Kosovo sculptor features legends and myths in Shkodra

TIRANA, May 12 – Vienna-based Kosovo sculptor Destan Gashi has opened an exhibition in the northern Albanian city of Shkodra where he is displaying Albanian legends and myths in stone.
Some twenty marble sculptures are being showcased at the Migjeni Theatre in Shkodra in the first exhibition the Kosovo sculptor is displaying in Tirana.
The key work in the exhibition is a sculpture on the legend of the local Rozafa fortress in Shkodra and the saga of its creation.
“The legend of Rozafat Castle, now the ruins of a no doubt originally Illyrian fortification soaring above the town of Shkodra in northern Albania, involves one of the grimmest motifs of Balkan legendry, that of immurement. The story of a woman being walled in during the construction of a bridge or castle in order to stabilise the foundations is widespread in oral literature in Albania, the Balkans and elsewhere.”
The exhibition “The Rozafa legend and other stories in stone” will be featured in Shkodra from May 15 to 21 after its display in Kosovo at the National Library in Prishtina last April.
“The stones feature Albanian stories such as that of Rozafa, Doruntina, the Has region people and the proud women of this highland, villages near the Drin i Bardhe and their traditions,” curators say.
Graduated from the Art Academy of Brussels, Destan Gashi has been living and working as a freelance artist in Vienna since 1987.