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31/12/2004

Adrian Paci

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Turn On

A number of men sit quietly, by them-selves, on some steps in a town square. The camera pans slowly over their lined faces that bear witness to a strenuous life. The square is located in Albania's second largest city, Shkoder, the birthplace of artist Adrian Paci. And it is Adrian Paci who is behind the camera, having returned to his hometown. The piece is entitled Turn On (2003), which is exactly what the idle men do when the character of the film suddenly changes. From a lingering, almost aloof camera movement in daylight, there is an abrupt shift to darkness. An almost effulgent light, a sacral sat-uration, dissolves into blackness, and then, suddenly, let there be light! Generators appear, ancient, mechanical things, with which the men, one by one, turn on large light bulbs that they hold in front of them like torches.

Turn ON
Turn On, 2003
© Adrian Paci

Adrian Paci, born in 1969 into an artist family, was educated at the Academy of Art in Albania before the fall of the total-itarian regime. From having worked in a realistic tradition, it was suddenly possi-ble to experiment with new attitudes. It was a time of break-up and chaos, during which Adrian Paci escaped to Italy with his family. Albanian Stories (1997) was his first work after the emigration. His daughter, Yolanda, then three years old, relates memories and re-enacts a tale fea-turing a cat and a rooster, the evil powers and the international forces. The depth of the story moved Adrian Paci; it did not need any artistic adaptation other than that which a simple video camera could provide. His role as an artist was suddenly subordinated to the fundamentals of his child's serious game. Apparizione (2001) is a video work in the same spirit, in which his youngest daughter, Tea, is singing in Italy while her relatives in Albania 'answer'. Like an antiphony, a liturgy of exile and loss, the song flows back and forth. Parti-c-ularly in his early works, Adrian Paci is inspired by his own experiences. The specificity gradually assumes a more gener-al form, his own life becoming part of the collective history.

Moderna Museet
Island of Skeppsholmen
Stockholm

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