“The artist offers visions. He imagines things. It’s about how the experience of the world is feeding the language and how this language becomes part of the world.” Interview with Albanian video-artist Adrian Paci about his work and how he views the world.
In 1997, Adrian Paci (b. 1969) escaped violent riots in Albania to take refuge with his family in Italy. On his arrival in the country, he temporarily abandoned painting and sculpture in favour of video, thus exploring new cinematic languages and means of expression. His experience of exile, the shock of separation and adaptation to a new place define the context of his first videos, through which he attempts to discover the roots of his past. “The fact of being at a crossroads, at the frontier of two separate identities, underlies all my work on film”, Adrian Paci says.
Again and again Adrian Paci reflects upon the themes of migration, placelessness, the repercussions of globalization as well as the transformation of cultural identities. Gradually, Adrian Paci has distanced himself from his personal experience to treat collective history, in projects that put the emphasis on the consequences of conflicts and social revolutions, revealing how identity is conditioned by the socio-economic context. Working with non-professional actors, men and women in difficulty, he explores many of the existential and social problems of our epoch: migration, mobility, loss, displacement, globalization, cultural identity, nostalgia, memory.
After representing Albania at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and exhibiting at the MoMa PS1 in New York in 2005, his work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions: Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Kunstverein, Hanover, Tel Aviv contemporary art centre, Bloomberg Space in London, Kunsthaus Zurich, Musee d’Art Contemporain in Montreal as well as the Galeries nationals du Jeu de Paume in Paris. His amazing work “The Column”, following the transformation of a marble stone into a sculpture travelling from China to Europe has been part of the 2014 Architecture Biennale in Venice.
Adrian Paci was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at Jeu de Paume, Paris
Camera: Germain Ferey
Edited by: Kamilla Bruus
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner, 2014
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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