Albanian Pavilion at Venice Biennale of Art - Arsenale - City of Venice
Exhibition in progress from April 23rd to November 27th 2022
The 59th Biennale Arte will open to the public on 23 April. But on the 20th, 21st and 22nd there will be the various openings and collateral events that always suddenly animate the Venetian artistic life. The awards ceremony will take place on the day of the opening to the public.
The title of the 59th edition of the Biennale d'Arte is Il Latte dei Sogni that means The Milk of Dreams.
The invited artists are 213 from 58 countries. There are 26 Italian artists, 180 the first participations in the International Exhibition, 1433 the works and objects on display, 80 new productions.
In all, 80 nations will participate in the Venice Biennale in the pavilions at the Giardini, the Arsenale and in the historic center of Venice.
Go to the page of the 59th Venice Art Biennale
Curator of the 59th Venice Art Biennale
The 2022 edition is curated by Cecilia Alemani.
Albanian Pavilion at 59th Biennale Arte of Venice
The title of the exhibition at the Albanian Pavilion is From the beginning.
Artists: Lumturi Blloshmi.
Curators: ADELA DEMETJA.
Seat: Albania Pavilion, Artiglierie, Arsenale - Venice
Press Release Albanian Pavilion
The Albanian Pavilion at the 59th edition of La Biennale di Venezia is represented by
Lumturi Blloshmi. Blloshmi is the first female artist to represent Albania with a solo
presentation in Venice and Adela Demetja the first Albanian female curator of the
Albanian Pavilion. Demetja became friends with Blloshmi in 2016 and she was one of
her closest collaborators until the end of the artist�s life.
Born in 1944 in Tirana, Blloshmi was one of the most important Albanian visual artists
of her time. Blloshmi�s father, an Officer of King Zog�s Army, was executed by the
Communists when Lumturi was only two months old. At five years old she lost her
hearing following an infection of meningitis. Blloshmi graduated from the Painting
Department at the Academy of Arts in Tirana in 1968. Between 1974 and 1985, she
was not allowed to continue her creative practice due to political reasons and she only
had her first solo exhibition at the age of forty-four. Until 2004, Blloshmi worked in
several institutions, including the National Gallery of Arts and Institute of Cultural
Monuments in Tirana. Following this, she worked as an independent artist. Several of
her works are included in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Tirana. Her
works have been shown among others in group and solo exhibitions in institutions like
the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, Municipal Art Gallery of Bydgoszcz Poland,
Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries Egypt, Albania National Gallery of
Arts, Kosovo National Gallery of Arts. Lumturi passed away on 27 November 2020 as a
result of an infection with Covid-19.
Lumturi Blloshmi has a remarkable biography, a powerful personality and most
importantly, a qualitative body of work which makes her unique and a reference point
for the national and international contemporary art discourse.
Lumturi Blloshmi's body of work fits very well within this year's theme of the Venice Art
Biennale titled �The Milk of Dreams�. The title is borrowed from a book by Leonora
Carrington, in which, as the curator of the Biennale Cecilia Alemani says; �the Surrealist
artist describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the
prism of the imagination, and where everyone can change, be transformed, become
something and someone else. The exhibition takes us on an imaginary journey through
metamorphoses of the body and definitions of humanity.�
Like almost all the artists of her generation, Lumturi Blloshmi painted in socialist
realism style until the end of the �80s. After the �90s, she was nevertheless one of the
few artists of her generation that managed to constantly reposition and transform
herself and her work successfully until the end of her life. Her works in painting,
photography, installation and performance are characterized by an ironic and satiric
way of reflecting and overcoming the reality in which she lived. Blloshmi stood in the
middle of her cosmos, not as a passive viewer but rather as an active participant.
This allowed her to openly express her perceptions about the art world and its
mechanisms and the society which she was part of. Her view was that of a strong
woman criticizing and provoking with humor the power establishment dominated by
men. What makes her oeuvre remarkable is the symbolic simplicity and optimism she
uses when dealing with the harsh reality.
Oftentimes Blloshmi depicted herself in her
paintings, performances and photographs. By doing so, she clearly created, through
subjectivity, a relationship between herself and the given social-political context, which
allowed her and us to perceive history and reality from a self-defined and personal
point of view. By cultivating and readopting an approach that goes beyond feminism,
nationality and specific art styles, Blloshmi has tirelessly resisted different regimes and
developments by building her work starting from her own personal experience and
transiting from a certain type (Albanian,woman, politically persecuted, disabled) to a
personality and becoming one the most remarkable and innovative contemporary
artists. Nevertheless, her oeuvre has not yet been fully explored and examined and it is
still unknown for the international art world.
Therefore her practice informed by imagination and innovation intersects very well with
the curated section of the Biennale that focuses on personal mythologies that try to
imagine alternative models of coexistence and transformation that enable the
re-enchantment of the world.
The presentation under the title �Lumturi Blloshmi. From scratch� will be conceived as
an exhibition project aiming at researching, examining, presenting and positioning the
work and life of Lumturi Blloshmi anew within the national and international art history.
The presentation is conceived in three parts. The heart of the presentation consists of a
selection of Blloshmi�s works from the 1960s until the 2010s, spanning self-portraits
and compositions in painting and photography that say as much about Blloshmi�s
aesthetic essence and personal reality as they do about the specific political and social
context in which they were created. By remaining true to the unfiltered urge to express
experience awareness, Blloshmi constantly pushed the boundaries of media and
formal styles by experimenting with materials and combinations of media to achieve
what she called �a distinct tangible universe.� Formally situated within the boundaries
of figuration, her oeuvre - strongly informed by imagination and innovation - at its core
transmits and resonates a sense of universality and timelessness.
The pavilion is
conceived in such a way as to reflect Blloshmi�s tangible yet simultaneously
ungraspable universe and its openness to interpretations. The exhibition architecture
and display is closely created in collaboration between the curator and the German
architect Johanna Meyer-Grohbr�gge.
Through a virtual constructed environment the viewer will have the possibility to get an
overview and a feeling of Blloshmi's personal world and creative environment. This part
aiming at creating a sort of virtual archive will be created in close collaboration between
the curator and the British virtual reality artist Alexander Walmsley.
Albanian Pavilion Team
Curator: Adela Demetja
Assistant Curator: Eni Derhemi
Interactive Media Artist: Alexander Walmsley
Filmmaker: Tin Dirdamal
Exhibition Architect: Johanna Meyer-Grohbr�gge
Legal representative of Lumturi Blloshmi: Ervin Blloshmi
Commissioner: Ministry of Culture of Albania
Supporters: Ministry of Culture of Albania, Gw�rtler Foundation
Media Partner: Digitalb
Curator
Adela Demetja is a curator born in Tirana, living and working between Frankfurt/Main
and Tirana. She holds a master's degree in "Curatorial and Critical Studies" from
St�delschule and Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. She is the director of
Tirana Art Lab � Center for Contemporary Art, an independent art institution which she
established in 2010. As an independent curator she has organized and curated
numerous international exhibitions in Europe and the US.
Exhibition Architect
Johanna Meyer-Grohbr�gge is a German architect who lives and works in Berlin. In her
practice, Meyer-Grohbr�gge, they are looking for simple spatial answers to complex
questions. Developing new beliefs in exchange with clients determines the way they
work. With a variety of projects ranging from residential buildings to many projects in
the art world, furniture design and landscape architecture, they explore the possibilities
of creating different ways of living together and to generate new Identities.She is
teaching at DIA since 2010. She also taught at Columbia GSAPP, the Northeastern
University Boston and the Washington University St. Louis.
https://meyer-grohbruegge.com
Interactive Media Artist
Alex Walmsley is a British virtual reality artist and developer based in Berlin. He is
particularly interested in the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds, and
how they are socially and technologically mediated. His work takes the form of
interactive computer-generated environments, be they historic, speculative, or abstract,
that make extensive use of digitised elements of the physical world. He comes from a
background in archaeology and anthropology (University of Cambridge, University of
Geneva). Alongside his artistic work, he is also currently a research associate for VR
and 3D visualisation at the HafenCity University, Hamburg.
https://www.alexanderwalmsley.co.uk
Filmmaker
Tin Dirdamal born in 1982 in Mexico is a self-taught filmmaker and interdisciplinary
artist with formal studies in engineering. He directed and produced No One (2005),
Death in Arizona (2014) and Rivers of Men (2011). He has received grants from
Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute and Rockefeller Media Artists. His films have
been shown and awarded at Sundance, Visions du Re�l, IDFA, La Mostra de Sao
Paulo, BAFICI, FICUNAM, ARTE (TV). He is regularly invited to give lectures and
workshops at venues and universities including UCLA, Yale, NYU, Hunter, Union Docs
(Brooklyn) and DocLab (Hanoi). He currently lives in Albania.
Assistant Curator & Production Manager
Eni Derhemi is the assistant curator of the Albanian Pavilion 2022. Eni and Adela have
known each other since 2016 and have been working together since then on different
occasions. Eni Derhemi was born in 1992 in Tirana, she is an Albanian artist and
curator. She holds a Bachelor Degree in Design & Arts from the Free University of
Bozen-Bolzano and a Masters Degree in Visual Arts from the University of Bologna.
Since 2010, she has lived and worked in the creative sphere between Albania, Italy and
Germany. In 2020 she co-founded Ecumene Project, where she has the role of project
director, curator and researcher.
Useful information for the visit
Hours:
Gardens from 10.00 to 19.00. Arsenale from 10.00 to 19.00 (from 10.00 to 20.00 on Friday and Saturday until September 30th). Closed on Mondays (except May 13, September 2, November 18).
Tickets: please visit the official website.
Phone: +39.041.5218711; fax +39.041.5218704
E-mail: aav@labiennale.org
Web: Biennale
of Venice |
