Suspended between East and West with a fascinating nature and a thousand-year-old culture, Albania - today a rapidly expanding country - presents itself at the Turin International Fair, a springboard for artists. Among the numerous artists who will participate are also four Albanian artists: Iva Lulashi, Edson Luli, Lala Meredith-Vula and Agron Hoti.
The 'fil rouge' of the twenty-fifth edition of the Fair is "Time" (Time is on our side) understood not as static crystallization of memory and celebration, but proposed as dynamic flow, able to impress the rhythm of change, preserving the temporal suspension of the emotion of the work of art.
The Albanian artists:
Iva Lulashi
The "Prometheus" Art Gallery of Milan proposes itself with the Albanian artist Iva Lulashi; 7 works of the "Eroticommunism", which bear erotic images of an Albanian story told through the stories of her mother, the occasional paintings of her father, some photographs found and few childhood memories. The artist digs into the social and collective memory of Albania and presents with great courage the eros in art that causes malice still today.
Iva lives and works in Milan. She is graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. He has exhibited his works on various occasions such as the Mediterranean Biennial and the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana. Various prizes have been recognized to her in Italy, Austria and Albania.
Edson Luli
Another Albanian author presented by the same Gallery is Edson Luli, born in Scutari who lives and works in Milan. He also carries out a continuous investigation on the existence of the being and its relationship with the environment, creating a visual and verbal interaction with the process of production of the images present in our daily life, in which the observer becomes the observed.
Edson Luli has completed his film studies at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan.
He participated in the Film Festival in Milan in 2015, and in various presentations of contemporary art such as in Chile, Venice, Tirana and Milan.
Lala Meredith-Vula
Lala Meredith-Vula lives and works in Leicester (where she teaches at the Monfort University), United Kingdom, and is originally from Kosovo. It is presented by the Alberto Paola Gallery in Turin. He is an artist and photographer: curious about different aspects of the life of people in the countryside of Kosovo, he develops a singular interest in haystacks that sometimes seem to be animated, that are about to speak and tell their version of events. His photography is chosen in black and white, which contributes to give a sense of temporal uncertainty.
He has presented solo shows in Turin, Scutari, Prishtina, London, Rome, Oslo, Geneva, Zagreb and many other cities, and group exhibitions in Chicago, Athens, Brussels, London, Rome, Genoa, etc.
Agron Hoti
Agron Hoti (1970), lives and works in Verona. Ad Artissima is presented by the Galleria Little Nemo in Turin with three works: Diabolik; Donald Duck and The Avengers. Three works of collage and vinyl glue on canvas with the world of comics. To express himself he too uses the images that the collective memory of the photographic archives has already handed over to history; so he is a conceptual artist. The galaxy resides in the fascination of the infinite jets of the abstraction transferred with the colors on the canvases.
Hoti is the fifth winner of the Venice Biennale 2018. He lived for 10 years in Greece working on Byzantine sculptures and icons. He went to Italy in 2001 and established himself as an artist exhibiting works in Turin, Milan and Venice. It is confirmed at the international level in New York, Paris, Shanghai, Casablanca and Tel Aviv.
One of his works is in the German Parliament in Dusseldorf, as the only foreign author.
"L'Artissima", the edition of the Turin fair was inaugurated at Oval Lingotto in Turin from November 2nd-4th this year. 1000 artists, 195 galleries from 35 countries, 8 editions and 7 awards were presented.