Alban Muja: Just Another Hero

start of the tattoo series 2019

Alban Muja
Just Another Hero

Last Year the □□□□□■ space took part at the PARALLELVIENNA 2018 with a Meta-Installation. The Lightboxes that give the □□□□□■ its Name were transfered to the Booth at the Artfair. There the □□□□□■ spread the following offer: Every artist or curator who will get the Logo □□□□□■ tattood will get a solo exhibition in the following year. 23 people signed this contract and got the Logo tattooed. Now the exhibition Series starts with the opening of Alban Muja.

Alban Muja (born 1980) is a Kosovo-based artist. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prishtina with a BA and MA. His artistic work / activities arise in diverse media. They range from installations and documentaries to drawings and painting. Alban Muja took part in numerous exhibitions, among others in the MeetFactory in Prague, the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, the Guangdong Museum of Art, the James Gallery in New York the Zhejiang Art Museum, the Gagaosian Gallery in Berverly Hills etc. Numerous international residencies and scholarships led him to New York, Santa Fe, Istanbul and last but not least to Vienna. In June this year Alban Muja will represent the Kosovo Pavilion at 58th edition of Venice Biennale. One focus of his artistic activity is on the social, political and economic transformation processes in the southern Balkans and their effects on the subsequent extended geopolitical space. He subsequently links these investigations with his various media and discursive strategies to his current position in Kosovo. A central theme for the artist is the question of identity. In a series of short films he portrayed diverse personalities who had to leave Kosovo or Albania and found themselves in a new, “foreign” environment in which their own self-image was called into question. On the basis of the names of the protagonists, the viewer is shown how from a “simple” first name, e.g. a fascinating spectrum of meanings emerges that unfolds only through the translocation of a name from one language and sound space into another. The video “Forca” shown in the LLLLL exhibition is an excellent example of this aspect of Alban Muja’s work. Another focus of the artist’s work is critical questioning and deconstruction of national myths. In the exhibition, a marble is presented on three different sized pedestals. When these sockets are viewed in sequence, the marble seems to disappear in the socket. In this work, an association space is opened in which childlike games but also heroic monuments are imagined. Here, too, shows the specific artistic strategy of Alban Muja. Starting out from a
seemingly simple nucleus of meaning, he develops a network of references and associations that is the occasion for reflections and, as a result, can lead to the most fascinating conclusions among the observers.
Copyrigth, Boris Manner, 2019