The Visual Arts in Albania After Socialism
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses March 2016 Change of Sight, Sites of Creativity: The Visual Arts in Albania after Socialism Sofia Kalo University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Kalo, Sofia, "Change of Sight, Sites of Creativity: The Visual Arts in Albania after Socialism" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 581. https://doi.org/10.7275/7950680.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/581 This Campus-Only Access for Five (5) Years is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHANGE OF SIGHT, SITES OF CREATIVITY: THE VISUAL ARTS IN ALBANIA AFTER SOCIALISM A Dissertation Presented by SOFIA KALO Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2016 Anthropology © Copyright by Sofia Kalo 2016 All Rights Reserved SIGHTS OF CHANGE, SITES OF CREATIVITY: THE VISUAL ARTS IN ALBANIA AFTER SOCIALISM A Dissertation Presented by SOFIA KALO Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Julie Hemment, Chair ____________________________________ Jacqueline Urla, Member ____________________________________ Elizabeth Krause, Member ____________________________________ Jon Berndt Olsen, Member __________________________________________ Thomas Leatherman, Chair Department of Anthropology DEDICATION For my family ACKNOWLEDGMENTS So many people have helped during my research and writing journey. I would like to first thank my friends in Albania who graciously let me into their worlds, sharing so much about their art and their lives. I am especially endebted to Arben (Beni) Theodhosi for his friendship and unconditional support. Beni never said “no” and helped me gain the kind of access ethnographers only dream of. I have no doubt that my work would not have been the same without his energizing and generous presence. Much love and gratitude for Endri Dani, Matilda Odobashi, Enkelejd Zonja, Olson Lamaj, Maks Velo, Artan Shabani and Ledia Kostandini, whose time and attention shaped this work significantly. Your friendship, and the many debates and conversations that have strengthened it over the years, continue to be intellectually and personally sustaining. During the several years that it took me to finish this dissertation, I owe great intellectual debt to my M.A. and Ph.D. advisors. Julie Hemment, Jackie Urla and Betsy Krause have seen this work develop from the very beginning, as I timidly began exploratory research during my first year of graduate school under the auspices of the European Studies Program at UMass. They have been exceptional mentors since, offering profound insights, inspiration and support. Jon Olsen gave valuable input during the latter stages of the research and writing process. I am grateful to all of them, and I hope that they see in these pages the many ways in which they have inspired my thinking. Albania is not only my research site. It was once the only place I called home. My family immigrated to the United States exactly one decade before I returned to Tirana to begin this research. I know now that my return as researcher was also motivated by a desire to return “home,” which I found in frienships with Xheni Karaj, Ilirjana Kaja, v Matilda Odobashi and Stavri Çifligu, all of whom opened their homes and their hearts without reservation. My dear friends of many years, Xhuliana Agolli, Christopher Sweetapple, Enida Meneri and my siblings, Ledia Kalo and Kosti Kalo, have been wonderful sources of support, always offering joy and renewal through travel, music, pets, literature, love and adversariness. But it is to my parents, Ilia Kalo and Tatiana Tollkuçi Kalo, that I am most indebted. Thank you for supporting and respecting my choices selflessly, even when it was difficult for you to do so. My dissertation is for you. vi ABSTRACT CHANGE OF SIGHT, SITES OF CREATIVITY: THE VISUAL ARTS IN ALBANIA AFTER SOCIALISM FEBRUARY 2016 SOFIA KALO, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Dr. Julie Hemment This dissertation examines Albania’s fine art world after the end of state socialism in 1991. Drawing on two years of anthropological fieldwork (January –August 2006 and January 2010-August 2011) in Tirana, Albania’s capital city, I investigate how the withdrawal of state support and oversight on the arts, the introduction of a market economy and efforts toward European belonging have been reflected, responded to and challenged in the discourses and practices of aesthetic production. Viewing art as a productive site of social meaning, where people perform and struggle over their identities, their pasts and futures, this dissertation explores the social imaginaries that art is employed to construct as Albania navigates European Union integration and tries to tame its socialist past. Central to this dissertation is analyzing the increasing prevalence of discourses on art’s social relevance, which have crystallized only in recent years. Whereas in 2006, when I began to investigate the postsocialist art world in Albania, most artists in my study were primarily concerned with producing art for art’s sake and its commodity potential, by 2010 and 2011, informants frequently declared that an important aim of vii their work was to produce art that could have some relevance for society and the Albanian nation state. I show that such claims about art’s social relevance are being made in a context where local and transnational cultural flows and processes are complexly negotiated in light of both new and old knowledges which art producers strategically employ toward achieving the desired politics of the present and the future. These negotiations are indicative of the cultural politics of a decidedly postsocialist transition, where art producers: react to socialist-era perceptions on art and the role of the artist; engage with and respond to the influence of international institutions and foundations; and incorporate the universal vernacular of contemporary art which they infuse with local histories, knowledges and subjectivities. Looking at artists are key agents of globalization and physical embodiments of the deterritorialization of culture, this dissertation also examines how Albanian artists negotiate the forces of the local and the global in their work in an effort to illuminate processes of cultural and economic globalization in postsocialism. Lastly, this dissertation is about Albanian artists’ recent engagements with the [socialist] past. In their work, the symbols, forms, histories and memories of socialism had been gaining momentum, especially in recent years. I argue that their work does significant cultural work in current battles over remembering, documenting and erasing the past. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 1. BACKGROUND ON THE HISTORY OF FINE ART IN ALBANIA ........................24 Albania, Europe and “The West” ..........................................................................24 The Fine Arts before World War II ......................................................................27 The Fine Arts during State Socialism ...................................................................29 The Fine Arts in the Immediate Years of the “Transition” ...................................43 2. THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF ART IN POSTSOCIALISM ...................................54 “Art Can Bring Us Closer to Europe”....................................................................54 From “Art for Art’s Sake,” to Socially Relevant Art.............................................57 Art Organizations ...................................................................................................62 Art Kontakt ................................................................................................62 Tirana Institute of Contemporary Art ........................................................65 Tirana Art Lab............................................................................................70 The Social Relevance of Art ..................................................................................74 The Past, Now ............................................................................................74 International Funding Streams ...................................................................78 The Limits of Impact .............................................................................................85 3. THE EMPHASIS ON DIFFERENCE IN VISUAL ART .............................................87