TIRANA, May 5 – The Tirana Art Lab – Centre for Contemporary Art is presenting the project “Monument Ginger Society Tirana” conceived from Klara Schiller and Valerian Maly, the first artists in Residency Program. The Swiss artists who work and live together, realized their project during April and May in collaboration with a big group of participants from Tirana.
The project “Monument Ginger Society Tirana” consisted in building a non-hierarchical monumental sculpture. Conceived as a participative project, the artists asked different persons to contribute in building the sculpture. The building process was a reason to bring people together and to crate space for discussion and exchange between the participants.
Whenever monuments and sculptures of heroes, political figures or religious buildings are being constructed, principally they help in building or reinforcing specific hierarchical structures. By building a monumental sculpture with the shape of the oversized Ginger, made with cheap materials like wood and newspapers, the process of monumentalization is being presented into an ironical way.
Ginger as a structure for the sculpture is not a coincidental choice for the artists. In the field of botanic, Ginger is knows as a rhizome plant that grows under the earth in a non-structured way. In philosophy Rhizome is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Fꭩx Guattari, where they take as an example the botanic rhizome in this case the Ginger as a metaphor for a 100% non-hierarchical model.
The building process of the Ginger Monument took place during the four weeks at Qendra Sociale in Tirana. Many students of the Art Academy, students of other universities, artists, activist of the civil society, ect., joined the artists during this period and became part of the working group.
Qendra Sociale is founded with the purpose to create a space for meetings, discussions and exchange, and from this point of view it was the right place to build the sculpture and to establish an exchange platform for the participants.
“Monument Ginger Society Tirana”, will be presented in the final form starting from the 6th of May at Qendra Sociale.
Opening: Friday, 6 May, at 7 p.m
Opening dates: 6 May- 20 May, from 11 a.m – 7 p.m
Place: Qendra Sociale, Str. Hoxha Tahsin, Nr 187
