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“The Red Kiss of the Past That Does Not Pass”: State Socialism in Albanian Visual Art Today
Author(s) -
Kalo Sofia
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
visual anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.346
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1548-7458
pISSN - 1058-7187
DOI - 10.1111/var.12121
Subject(s) - kiss (tnc) , socialism , period (music) , state (computer science) , visual arts , art , state socialism , aesthetics , political science , law , communism , capitalism , computer network , algorithm , politics , computer science
This article examines memory work in recent Albanian visual art. My research has focused on the artwork of a generation of Albanian artists who have only lived their youth through the state socialist period and have now been turning to socialist subjects and symbolism, which they re‐present in novel and playful ways. Some of these artists offer nuanced reflections on the socialist past and its legacies, and others use the past to highlight what unsettles them about the present. These artworks further extend and complicate today's state‐sanctioned discourses and practices on socialism, thus making an important intervention about how the socialist experience is remembered in the present.