Adrian Paci: The Guardians

Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina is proud to present “The Guardians”, solo exhibition of the internationally acclaimed Albanian artist Adrian Paci.

The exhibition is part of the annual program of Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina, and takes the title of Paci’s film The Guardians’(2015). ‘The Guardians’ placed in present time, context and locations, where the exhibition appears, is intertwined with many layers of content and symbolical meaning.

‘The Guardians’ is a poetic reflection of the relationship between childhood and death. The story takes place in the Catholic cemetery of the artist’s hometown, Shkodra. During Paci’s childhood this old cemetery was not in use any more, but remained the only place in town where religious symbols could still be found, that is after the decision of the then Communist regime to ban all religious symbols as part of the campaign against religion which had peaked in the 1960s. The film draws inspiration from Paci’s childhood memories and the cemetery’s highly paradox character at that time, metaphysical and at the same time intriguingly secular since it had become a popular secret dating place. At the same time the film is triggered by a real event: In 1990 a group of young people decided to enter the cemetery and start clearing it from the dirt and the grass that was growing around the tombs. At the same time with this ‘new life’ of the cemetery, another new phenomenon appeared, that of the “abusive” buildings as the artist describes it. Those who did not own space in the official cemetery started building their own or their families’ tombs in this old Catholic cemetery, creating a kind of chaotic architecture, very typical in general in post-communist Albania. Among the new characters that started populating the cemetery, were groups of children who hung out there and were paid by the owners or relatives to clean and take care of the tombs. “The image of the kids washing the tombs has been working inside myself for quite some time” says Adrian Paci “and I decided to use it in this video”.