Enkelejd Zonja, Vigan Nimani at Galeria e Ministrisë së Kulturës (Qafa)
Thirty years after the autumn of Communism, Kosovo and Albania proceed to wrestle with the legacies of a single-party system. Curator Zef Paci explores these tensions, bringing collectively an artist from both aspect of the border—Enkelejd Zonja from Albania and Vigan Nimani from Kosovo—for the exhibition “after occasion.” Whereas the political methods of their residence international locations might have differed, the 2 artists’ works bear thematic similarities. On the entrance to the exhibition, two work reconstruct the promise of progress via trendy structure. Zonja’s crimson-skyed oil on canvas The Unnamed Metropolis, 2020, depicts the architect as a godlike determine towering over a scale mannequin of a future city. In Nimani’s extra subdued watercolor The Scale Mannequin, 2018, the architect is introduced from the shoulders down in order that the main target stays on his fingers, poised for motion, and the tiny white buildings earlier than him.
From out of the rubble of time, Nimani retrieves glimpses of the world earlier than the reckless wave of privatization that adopted the 1999 struggle in Kosovo. In two untitled watercolors from 2017, Nimani renders architectural parts like staircases and concrete facades—options that after vaunted the guarantees of socialist society—in deadpan vogue. The compositions are indifferent and with out a grain of nostalgia. In Zonja’s work, the previous isn’t a distant panorama. In Identic Fiction, 2016, he evokes the traumatic experiences that also outline Albania, drenching the canvas in an eerie crimson glow. Three males ominously encircle a fourth, who seems to be carrying a rabbit masks. This picture of a hybrid beast remembers Communism’s systemic oppression, when being categorized as human was not a given however reasonably an unstable designation altogether.
— Erëmirë Krasniqi
