The Albanian artists challenge and defy the difficult everyday reality, managing to offer personal solutions, says the exhibition’s curator
TIRANA, Dec. 26 – “Perchance to dream” is the title of this year’s 19th edition of the Onufri visual arts exhibition curated by Italy’s Daniele Capra. The exhibition inaugurated on December 28 will run until February 3, 2013 at the National Arts Gallery in Tirana. A curator, art critic and journalist, Capra, 36, has curated over 50 shows in Italy, France, Czech Republic, Germany, Israel.
The exhibition is named after a Shakespearean verse from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. Capra has chosen this title because, according to him, there is a noticeable correspondence between an anguished and confused Hamlet found in difficult personal circumstances, who regardless finds strength to think philosophically about the world and its enigmas. According to Capra, the Albanian artists challenge and defy the difficult everyday reality, managing to offer personal solutions. But if Hamlet chose the road of vendetta to solve his personal problems, the artists in this exhibition propose and search for new ways and solutions to overcome them.
Artists participating include Lu誡n Bedeni, Yllka Gjollesha, Genti Korini, Mariana Kostandini, Remijon Pronja, Alketa Ramaj, Violana Murataj, Arjan Shehaj.
Last year’s “The Painting of Modern Life’ Onufri topic was named after Charles Baudelaire’s essay published in 1863 in Paris. The annual exhibition is named after Onufri, Albania’s 16th century most important icon painter whose works are on display at the iconographic museum in the southern town of Berat, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008. In many of its previous editions, Onufri has been held as international exhibition bringing together artists from all over the world.
