The National Art Gallery, which is the organizer of this most important visual arts event in Albania, says the 21st edition of the Onufri exhibition will be held in November-December 2015
TIRANA, April 1 – After last year’s surprise absence, the first in the past two decades, the Onufri visual arts competition will return for its 21st edition with a new concept targeting to increase the event’s artistic level and transparency in the selection of its curator and the participant artists.
The National Art Gallery, which is the organizer of this most important visual arts event in Albania, says the 21st edition of the Onufri exhibition will be held in November-December 2015. A five-member organizing council composed of renowned artists has been set up to select the curatorial concept and participant artists.
The Culture Ministry says last year’s absence of the Onufri exhibition was “a moment of reflection on the 20-year progress of the event with curators, artists and critics to coordinate energy on what has happened and what’s going to come.”
Back in 2013, Berlin-based Albanian artist Silva Agostini was announced the winner of the Onufri 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.
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, featured artworks by young contemporary artists from Albania, Kosovo, Italy, France and Bulgaria.
Praise of Doubt, proposed by Italian curator Claudio Cravero for the last edition of the Onufri Prize, investigated 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 emerged as something that inevitably affects everybody.
The visual arts competition is named after Onufri, a mid-16th century Arch-priest who was the most important painter of icons and murals of the early post-Byzantine era in Albania. His works influenced by the northern Greek painting of the Paleologus age, the Cretan School and western Gothic art can be seen in many churches in central Albania in Greece and in particular at the Onufri museum in Berat which was opened in 1986. Characteristic of Onufri’s works are strong colors, especially reds. Onufri’s two sons, Joan and Nikolla, were also icon painters of note.
