TIRANA, Dec. 10 – Young contemporary artist Eros Dibra has been announced the winner of the Onufri visual arts competition for his video art featuring Albanian reality as a mixture of image fragility and instability.
A jury led by art professor Najada Hamza found the 24-year-old artist’s “XII” video as an aesthetically refined artwork featured with a cleat art language and a non-linear, but meaningful narration.
“In the proposed video, the author sets up a typical post-modernist glass game where the map of reality surfaces as a mixture of image fragility with the instability of the simulacrum,” said the jury.
The artist described his work as a personal viewpoint to covey the murderous reality and the concept of metaphysics.
“This is the first time I have participated in Onufri and I am really surprised by the award,” said Dibra.
“The issues artists face presently are not only an Albanian issue. These include political, art and exhibition issues,” he added.
A native of Shkodra, Eros Dibra has graduated in multimedia from the University of Art in Tirana. His field of interest varies from sound and video to classical painting.
Twenty-three Albanian and foreign artists are showcasing their specially created works in Tirana in the 21st edition of the Onufri competition, Albania’s most important visual art event, in a comeback which also features Yoko Ono, the Japanese multimedia artist, widow of famous rock star John Lennon and New York-based Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic among others.
The artists were selected by VestAndPage, a German-Italian artist duo who is curating this year’s event under the curatorial platform “The reason of Fragility, contemporary artists facing glass.” The curators say the artists were picked for the critical engagement with a visual art and consumerist culture which is rapidly changing and raising questions and confirming the important changes in the private, social and political spheres through a clear artistic and conceptual assessment of the proposed concept, the glass, to explore understandings and interpretations of the work of art in itself.
The exhibition is scheduled to remain open at the National Art Gallery in Tirana until January 3, 2016.
