Where and when
From
To
Museo Novecento
Albanian artist Lori Lako presents to the public “Suspense“, a single large-scale work curated by Sergio Risaliti, which starts from a reflection on the recent past of the artist’s native country to turn into a global denunciation of the harmful impact of human actions on the environment.
Exhibition Hours
Museo Novecento
Monday – Sunday
11:00 am
–
8:00 pm
Thursday
Inaugurated on 2 June on the occasion of the reopening of the museum after the lockdown, for the first time the Made in Italy project expands the boundaries of Italian art and hosts the work of the artist Lori Lako – born in Pogradec, Albania, in 1991 – but active for many years in the Italian artistic and cultural context. In this sense Made in Italy OFF alludes both to the outsourcing of the work projected outside the museum setting, and to the inclusive nature of an artistic community that does not separate but welcomes with care those who come from outside to listen to their stories and adventures.
“Suspense – explains the artist – starts from a reflection on an out-of-service cableway, which until the Communist regime transported limestone from the mountain of Letan, Elbasan, to the lime kiln, using the energy of the metallurgical plant. Letan’s industrial machine has given up because it could not resist the change in the political system, even if the containers that have been floating in the air for almost 30 years give the illusion of an end that has come suddenly, in the middle of a working day . Today the production of lime in Albania sometimes takes place illegally, through the burning of tires. This procedure obviously has a harmful impact on the environment and health. This work combines the past and the present by superimposing a photograph of one of the suspended containers with a frame taken from a film available on the internet, which shows the production of lime from burnt tires. The thick and toxic smoke from burning tires is reminiscent of what fills the air more and more often during protests and demonstrations around the world. From the merger of the two images, a third emerges, where the smoke coming out of the tires and the silhouette of the man with the pointing finger coexist within a new and layered reality“.
Made in Italy is a public art project that enters and invades the city from the museum in a game of references, of to and fro: from the museum to the urban space and vice versa. A large wall (12 × 3.5 meters), inside the museum, painted with the colors of the Italian flag, periodically hosts a work that has the ambition to speak to the world and the world, which tunes in to the urgencies and on the emergencies of our time, which confronts reality without being a simple comment on it. The work exhibited at the museum is reproduced simultaneously on the pages of local newspapers and on posters of different sizes in the streets of the cities, becoming an “OFF” exhibition, closely linked to the Museo Novecento, but also offered outside the museum context. An idea that intends to broaden the discourse of art to social participation to contribute to the construction of a new humanism.
Installation Views
Artist
Lori Lako
Pogradec, Albania, 1991
Curated by
Sergio Risaliti
Ph credits
Leonardo Morfini