Paci, who was born in Shkoder, Albania in 1969 and has lived in Italy for several years, came to the attention of the international art world thanks to the poetry and power of his work, which is focused on the identity, memory, and conflicts of different cultures. All these themes are bound up with the sense of alienation and abandonment of someone who leaves his homeland for a foreign country.
The entire exhibition is a powerful meditation on and lyrical compilation of the themes of home and the value of sentimental ties, which are construed both in terms of the private and public spheres of life. The personal, intimate experience of the artist is bound up with the history of recent political and economic events.
The exhibition features works in tempera on paper from “The Wedding” series and the complete, previously unexhibited series of photographs entitled “Home to Go.” The extremely symbolic images represented in the photographs – where the artist portrays himself in limbo, between the search for a domestic nest and the freedom of nomadic life – are combined with the autobiographical dimension of small pictorial works (scenes and details of Paci’s own wedding in Albania), which testify to his desire to preserve the memory of an ever-more distant world of sentiments and affection:
“These paintings are a sort of journey to places, landscapes, and individuals that I know well. They represent my attempt to return there, but there’s no way to shorten the distance. In fact, it becomes an essential part of the works.”
(Adrian Paci)