Extending over an entire floor, the exhibition is dedicated to a wide survey of video works by world-renowned artist Adrian Paci, starting with his earliest work from 1997 and concluding with two world premieres of his recent works from 2021. Paci is one of the most prominent and influential contemporary artists, who over two decades has been sensitively commenting on current political and social upheavals, while maintaining a unique humanistic voice. His art focuses on the individual, on singular human beings living within a collective, whose voices, facial expressions, and bodily movements are explored in his videos as in portraiture. From a close examination of specific people and unique situations, Paci zooms out to reflect on universal concepts and feelings such as loss and the struggle to overcome it.
Paci was born in Shkodër, Albania, and immigrated to Italy in 1997. His work addresses the state of liminality: of being between places, times, and cultures. The gaps and intervals explored in his work are all but empty: they are crowded with memories and desires that cannot be fully expressed. Stillness, silence, pauses, fragmented texts, and inconclusive narratives are the major elements of his works. Via sensitive aesthetic research of the medium of video, Paci fills the textual and audio voids with images that articulate what words fail to communicate. They convey the desire to heal, to overcome trauma, to achieve a sense of belonging and hold onto loved ones.
Broken Words, 2018, five-channel video installation:
Read the testimonies of those photographed:
The video Broken Words features five Syrian refugees, whom Adrian Paci met near Beirut. They were asked to talk about their personal experiences during the civil war in Syria. While one can hear the spoken text in Arabic, Paci edited each video to represent only the moments when the refugees stop talking. What we see, what we hear, and what we are told are incongruent, emphasizing that the full grasp of another's traumatic experiences is impossible; we can only hear broken words that convey fragments. Paci's projections are sensitive observations on the refugee's vocal, facial, and bodily expressions, which emotionally articulating what words are unable to convey.
Project supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity by the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (2021)
Project supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Project supported by
Conversation | artist Adrian Paci with the curator Dr. Kobi Ben-Meir