“Spring Airlab Exhibition 2019” is the closing exhibition of the artist’s residency program for the spring term, it comes as a collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Art in Tirana (TICA) and Zeta Centre, with the support of the Albanian Ministry of Culture. The exhibition will be open to public from 4th – 17 th September 2019. Participating artists: Altin Krasniqi, Blerta Hoçia and Donika Ҫina have conducted their research over a two-month period. The exhibition presents the progress of the research, as well as the conclusions the artists have reached regarding the city, the individual’s psychological world, or the memorable experiences of what surrounds us.
Altin Krasniqi is represented by a video installation called “Still Untitled”, through which he tries to examine times of violence, deportation and peace. What is gained from this creation is the thought of fragility, the fragility of the boundary between what is tangible and what is imaginative: a teenager confesses the ordeal of his military journey. It involves the unexpected, the dangers, the eliminations, until you finally realize that this is but a tale of a non-existent event that was nothing more than a technological “war” game. A dog toy, gift to the author at age 5, a time when his family and many Kosovo families left their homes to survive, ironically links the controversy within the video installation as an attempt to understand the human psyche, who in times of war painfully seeks peace and, irresponsibly, in times of peace, entertains himself with the idea of war.
Sequentially follows another creation, Blerta Hoçia’s “Manifest of Survival,” where she combines the image and the word to bring to the exhibition miserable urban suburbs or corners. Departure from the glittering centre resembles the departure of the Buddha from life’s splendour, coupled with the persistent curiosity to know the other side of human life. Such passing brings the cognitive experience gained through life; self-acceptance (including descent); rejection of social organization; the serenity gained after every ordeal. Memory (personal and social) is important in her creative work; it helps her to interact with the past in order to understand the present.
In this interaction the spiritual and emotional trait is essential. We say the same truths, but not necessarily with the same heart, and this affects the desired outcome. Donika Çina presents this at the exhibition by shaping it through a television recording of a show she has been invited to. The show is transmitted by two screens and a transcription device: they are the same speakers, the same subject matter, the same studio and more or less the same content, except without the same emotional excitement from the first recording to the second. Her installation work (“Pepper’s ghost”), released through the media, leaves viewers free to maintain their own stand as they face a new perspective.
* Altin Krasniqi (1994, Kosovo) is an artist living and working in Prishtina, Kosovo. He works mainly with the media of painting, drawing, and installation. He graduated for visual arts and painting at the AAB College, Prishtina (2017). He is the finalist of “The Artists of Tomorrow” Award (2018), Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art, Prishtina; the winner of the second prize and participant at the “Urgjencat delikate” workshop, “Cittadellearte”, Italy and Art House, Shkodër (2017).
* Blerta Hoçia (1984 Tirana) is an artist and curator from Albania, living between Tirana and Pristina. She completed her degree in Painting Techniques at the Academy of Florence, Italy. Previously she was curator at Miza Gallery, an artist-running space in Tirana and the Head of the Archive at “Marubi National Museum of Photography”. She is an artist with several personal and collective exhibitions. Her solo exhibitions include “The Demiurge”, Sala Rosa, Siena Italy (2012); “In the absence of external forces do not possess my own form” Magma Florence, Italy (2013) and “I thought of you so hard” Zeta Galeri, Tirana (2016). She participated in several collective exhibitions and art fairs, among them “Emergenz”, Berlin (2013); “Supermarket” Stockholm (2015); “Parallel Vienna” (2017); “Ardhje” Award Tirana (2014) and “Muslim Mulliqi” Prize, Prishtina (2018).
* Donika Çina is from Albania. She usually works in the medium of video art, video installation and short movies. She graduated from the Faculty of Visual Art – Multimedia, at the Academy of Arts in Tirana and continued to study photography and video at the University of Arts and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania and further in the class of Candice Breitz at the University of Art in Braunschweig, Germany. She has been part of numerous national and international exhibitions and projects like: “Abania is not Cuba” curated by Amy Zion, Havana, Cuba; “Dejeuner avec Marubi”, curated by Annmarie Turk, Belvedere 21, Vienna, Austri; “Ylli me pesë cepa”, Zeta Gallery, Tirana Albania; “In-Between”, Zeta Gallery, Tirana, Albania; “Ardhje” Award 2016, Zeta Gallery, Tirana Albania etc.
