The new cycle of paintings by Edi Hila kicked off today the new season at the Center for Openness and Dialogue in the Prime Ministry. The new season’s theme will be “The space where we live, the space we share and the space we leave behind”.
“Visions in the Boulevard”, a series of unpublished works by artist Edi Hila, was presented today in the presence of Prime Minister Edi Rama and wife Linda, representatives of the diplomatic corps, prominent artists and personalities of civil society.
The subject of the Hila’s new cycle of paintings is Tirana’s main boulevard with its most representative buildings, the square “Mother Teresa”, the University building, the former fountain, the building of the Prime Ministry. Inspired by this boulevard, through painting and colors that are mostly gray, blue and sienna, Hila presents his vision of Albania during the time of transition.
“It is impossible for me to summarize Edi’s world. It’s is like a trick with mirrors that hide a timid but very profound man who speaks through these mirrors, without being ever able to tell which of the mirrors reflect what he is trying to say. My emotion today is not only related to my long-standing relation with Edi, but it has to do with the fact that his work, or this new series of his work, is being presented for the first time here in this building. Those who know Edi’s story with the state structure, know very well what I mean with the state structure as a presence in his life. Since the beginning of the 70s, he inadvertently appeared just like he was in a mirror where others read a serious distortion of the socialist realism, which then brought him a lot of trouble, but also put him, I believe in a definitive way, in a very complicated relations with the state structures and buildings. The presence of this new series within this building, but with a series of mirrors that reflect the spirit of these buildings and, as you see or will see, the reflected spirit is different from what these buildings want to tell, is really sensational”, – Prime Minister Rama said about Hila’s new cycle of works.
Edi Hila is known not only to the Albanian public, but also abroad. His works have been exhibited in several European capitals. Last year, together with Adrian Paci, Hila represented Albania at the Architecture Biennale in Venice, with the work “Possible Monuments of Unrealized Futures”, which subsequently exhibited in London.
The exhibition “Visions of the boulevard” is the beginning of a discussion about the culture of dialogue and its transformation, which will be presented in this season at the COD with a series of activities, such as conferences, seminars, artistic experiments, presentations of publications and authors.
