The first Tirana Art Weekend took place in the heart of the city, at Villa TAWE1 – simultaneously encompassing a network of exhibitions and satellite programs spread throughout the city. The gradual opening of the exhibitions allowed participants to enjoy the program at a comfortable pace, while wandering between different venues and exhibition spaces in Tirana. Among the audience was a vibrant mix of local and international participants. Local artists mingled with curators, journalists, art space founders, international visitors and Albanians from the diaspora – some recently returned after decades abroad. The latter suggesting a burgeoning wave of Albanian culture workers seeking to reconnect with their roots, and create within the country’s evolving art landscape. For Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine, I present some of the highlights of Villa TAWE alongside the most captivating moments from locations around the city that made Tirana Art Week an outstanding experience.
Selection from TAWE Villa
The Bulevard Art Media Institute, situated in the first room on the ground floor, displayed an archival work that fully embodies the Institute’s working principles. A maxi chart invited audiences to further map the Albanian art scene from the 1990s to the present; we see pivotal moments of the last three and a half decades: landmark exhibitions, occurrences, the establishment of the Albanian Women Artists Association2, the role of the Soros Foundation in the Albanian art scene at that time, the first documented use in an exhibition context of the term „curator“3, and the emergence of some of the oldest contemporary art spaces such as Zeta, TICA, Tirana Art Lab.
Additionally, it explores the creation of significant art prizes such as Ardhja and Onufri. Together, these parts provide a non-hierarchical view of the developments of the contemporary art scene in Albania.
Pararoja, founded by Olson Lamaj, unveiled a poetic installation by artist Genc Kadriu titled The Sea from the Lady. The work alters an aged table as its centrepiece, an evocative assemblage makes its top layer of black-and-white photography and airy flea-market finds, including a fever thermometer halted at 36.8 degrees. The work speaks about life, shadows, longings, and summer days accompanied by a great darkness thereafter.
Kadriu’s distinctive practice, repeatedly referred to as Performance of Objects, imbued the space with a profound sense of intimacy, resonance and atmospheric experience (Highlight: a micro performance with Rrezearta Agasi. Incense smell, a Casio keyboard, a printed poem).
The bulëzat publication was initiated in year 2020 by Art House Shkodra. The publication series came to life as an effort to cultivate and enrich the discourse on contemporary art in the Albanian language, by offering so translations of pivotal texts by renewed thinkers on arts, and philosophy. Same time, bulëzat is also a way to fill the linguistic and conceptual gaps into the intellectual exchange within Albanian-speaking communities. The third edition, curated by Lek M. Gjeloshi and presented during Tirana Art Weekend brings together in a bookcase, fragments from the work of Albania and Kosovo thinkers. Among them Elsa Demo, Edi Muka, Erëmirë Krasniqi, and Ester Celami. Diverse reflections and a very unique display with the terracotta brick pedestals.
Stefan Taçi’s (*1961) animated film retrospective, in The Albanian Cinematheque is set in the last room of the villa, and it is reached via a narrow, creaking wooden staircase. The room’s architecture, its low ceiling, the narrowness, the arched windows – evoke a feel of an oriental Tirana. Spanning the years between 1990 and 2003, Taçi’s works include among others Nostalgia, The Daydreamer, Things That Will Never Change—the latter opening with the Scorpions‘ song „Wind of Change.“
The Albanian Cinematheque describes the artists films as dazzling and purely Albanian. Taçi is also part of the 90s relatively unknown animation renaissance scene.
A Sonic Journey Through the Vernissage: Vinyls, intimate Performances, Speeches
The Vernissage evening (November, 29th) unfolded as a sonic journey, weaving an auditory backdrop for our first experience of the exhibitions4. The evening began with a vinyl selection by Rubin Beqo, renowned for his meticulous research into Albania’s musical archives and the discovery of hidden music treasures. Then Elsa Mala followed with a touching performance on the staircase, dispersing the audience across the ground and first floors. All deeply infused with personal narratives, which I always worship.
Oda Haliti then took over, steering the rest of the evening with her DJ music performances. When I asked Haliti what she had played the whole night, she says that it has been a mixture of everything: speeches, poetry, industrial sounds, dubstep, sonic techno, tribal vibes, and even Nina Simone’s iconic speech „An Artist’s Duty“.
TAWE Around the City and Satellite Program
At Botime Berk, Anna Shkreli (founder of Berk Publishing) and Arba Baxhaku (architect, professor) hosted the public reading of Dekalogu i një lagjeje Tiranase (The Decalogue of a Tirana Neighborhood). The book was first published in 2020 and has since been reprinted several times. It weaves together the stories of this particular house – the house of Shkreli’s great-grandfather, the lives and stories of its inhabitants, and those of the adjacent alleys. This typical structure, now housing Berk Botime, serves as a rare relic of the once-distinctive architectural identity of Tirana’s neighborhoods. It stands as a testament to resilience, showing how such a house could endure amidst the towering skyscrapers that have irrevocably transformed the cityscape. The book is available exclusively in Albanian.
Alongside Berk Botime, Apparat Studio showcases for the visitors the unfolding of the public artwork Terminal for Tirana by contemporary artist Karolina Halatek, a permanent site-specific installation physically located at Mother Teresa Hospital (Karolina Halatek’s Interview with LNR Magazine). While hearing about the realisation of the installation, I am attracted also from a four-wall-mounted piece by Dea Buza—all arranged in a vertical sequence. These mixed media pieces feature conceptual, unrealized 3D interventions on a grey, charming building from communist-era Tirana, evoking an imaginative vision of unpretentious transformations.
At Destil Creative Hub, the Albanian Cinematheque hosted the screening of Walter Fasano’s documentary Pino, offering an evening of deep reflection. The film delves into Pino Pascalis’s profound connection with his work, the sea, the frequent trips to Naples to collect notes, and a distinctive day in the artist’s life—the day he stopped combing his hair after purchasing his first motorcycle. „The wind will comb my hair,“ he declared, embodying his free-spirited nature and poetic relationship with the world.
Minus Art Space, situated in another neighborhood of Tirana (Rruga Tefta Tashko) showcased the work of emerging artist Klara Fyshku. The duo behind the space operates with an artist-centered philosophy, identifying themselves as facilitators rather than curators, which is why their exhibitions omit the term „curator“ altogether. Our conversations outside the space naturally gravitated toward the pressing need for experimental platforms in the art scene.
*Tirana Art Weekend is an initiative of the Albanian Visual Arts Network (AVAN) and has been supported by the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation as part of International Cultural Weeks: Albania and Kosovo Cultural Week, Raiffeisen Invest Albania and the European Union in Albania. For more insight into AVAN’s work, see LNR’s Interview about Tirana Art Weekend.
- Built in 1926, the building initially served as the Italian Legation in Tirana until 1939. During Albania’s Fascist occupation, it housed the Regent’s office, representing Emperor Vittorio Emmanuele III. Post-liberation, it briefly became the “Museum of the War” before transforming into the Archaeological-Ethnographic Museum in 1947, showcasing artifacts from sites like Durrës, Butrint, and Apollonia. In 1957, it became the Soviet-Albanian Friendship headquarters, later hosting committees for international relations and war veterans during socialism. After the regime’s fall, it housed the Institute of Former Political Prisoners and the Institute for the Study of Crimes of Communism. Since 2007, it holds the status of a cultural monument. ↩︎
- Lindart. See: https://albanica.al/studime_arti/article/view/3016 ↩︎
- October 19: The Exhibition „Riorientim“ curated by Edi Muka opens at Ish Porcelani – according to Ermir Hoxha this was the first exhibition in which there was a curator specified. The exhibition was supported by Soros Foundation and by Donika Bardha (Founder of the Albanian Arts Foundation) ↩︎
- As in every review, I always return more than once to the exhibition spaces. ↩︎