"Tirana/Tyranny: Human Experience of Tyranny - Albania (1944-1990)"
2002-01-23 until 2002-04-28
Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona
Barcelona, , ES Spain

Tirana: the capital of Albania Tyranny: power of a single person, exercised with a view to oppression Tirana/Tyranny: an exhibition about the human experience of tyranny, centring on the case of Albania (1944-1990) Albania is a country forgotten by the world which reappeared to the eyes of public opinion in the form of images of ships filled to overflowing with Albania refugees in the docks of Italian ports from 1991 to 1997.

The year 1985 had seen the death of the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha. Since 1945 he had dominated Albania with his bloody and paranoid rule, bringing about the countrys total isolation from the rest of the world. He exercised a tyranny which affected every aspect of Albania life: physical, psychological and aesthetic.

The exhibition Tirana/Tyranny takes as its point of departure this harsh reality as seen by the Albanian writer Bashkim Shehu, an exile in Barcelona since 1997. Using architectural references (symbolic constructions of the architecture of power), audiovisual montages, paintings and sculptures of socialist realism, statues of Communist leaders removed from public squares, books and photographs, Shehu dissects the tyranny exerted by Hoxha and turns it into a metaphor. In this way, the exhibition extrapolates the case of Albania to many others which have occurred in the course of contemporary history.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Spain

Other Important Exhibitions in Barcelona