HARABEL Contemporary is pleased to invite you to the inauguration of the public art installation “Zâni” by sculptor Sadik Spahija, this Monday, May 31^st 2021, at 18:30, at Zogu I Boulevard, facing Tirana Bank.

This work is the third public art oeuvre installed in Tirana through Free Art Project, a project of HARABEL Contemporary Art Platform, following the installation of “The Calligraphy” by Adrian Paci and “EnoughIsEnough” by Alban Muja.

Through this project HARABEL aims to bring the public closer to contemporary art, through the installation of works of art in public and free spaces, avoiding the door-barrier of galleries or museums, emphasising the belief that art is an educational and formative tool of the individual, grower of intellectual thought, of critical thinking and of imagination, and not only decorative.

The concept of the artwork

“Zâni” (in English “The Voice”) is a sculptural installation consisting of a combination of iron pipes of different sizes, which seem to be suspended in the air and hold each other through the play of light. This work is physically imposing: of very large dimensions (16 m in height and width), the installation is heavy and of monumental volume; and yet it seems like a transparent projection of itself, as if it has no weight, but is the metaphorical transcript of a melody brought about by the whirling of the wind amidst a forest untouched by man. “Zâni” is indeed the figurative version of a group of trees whose branches intertwine to create shade for the passer-by, changing shape by the  penetration of sunlight or the contouring curved by night light, as an urban experience of a form brought by the future, of a human being who, no matter what they create, still remain inevitably connected with the voice and the volumes they find in the poetics of nature: always perfect.

“Zâni” does not strive to be something it isn’t. This is a work that seeks to convey peace and harmony between nature and the urban. It does not seek to convey any artistically coded message, but to underline, once again, that less is better and that nature has created beauty long before we did, accidentally and without any mistake.

Ajola Xoxa

About the artist

Sadik Spahija was born in Shkodra, Albania in 1959. He studied at the Academy of Arts in Tirana and graduated in 1983. Until 1989 he worked as a sculpture teacher at the Artistic High School in Shkodra and from 1989 he is a lecturer at the Academy of Arts. He has exhibited in many group and collective exhibition in Albania and abroad such as The 50th Anniversary of International Academy of ceramic, Balkan Exhibition in Athens, Greece in 2002, in Paris, Tirana, etc. While his most important personal exhibitions were in Berlin and Halle, Germany in 1995, in Paris, France in 2003, the most recent one is titled “Under Pressure” and took place in Tirana in 2012, at the FAB gallery. Sadik Spahija is also the winner of the first prize of the National Competition of Visual Arts “Onufri” in 1996. He is also awarded with many other prizes: The first prize at the “Kongresi i Lushnjës” sculptural complex competition, Golden Award “Naim Frashëri” from the President of the Republic of Albania in 2007, etc.