This exhibition focuses on Albanian social realism nd it offers a selection of paintings, posters and drawings produced under a dictatorship that aimed to spread socialism’s main principles among the proletariate.
Curated by Artan Shabani, an artist in his own right and the former director of the National Gallery of Arts, Tirana. The exhibition investigates the impact of the communist ideology on Albanian visual arts during the second half of the 20th century. The selected artworks reflect the role ideology that played in the works’ dogmatic content. At the same time it gives us an opportunity to examine the culture and identity of a people long isolated from the rest of the world, with images evolving round on daily life, the working classes, portraits of leaders, representations of the regime, and a innocent optimism about what was being bequeathed to future generations.
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
