Anila RUBIKU

www.anilarubiku.com

Exhibitions

Other Countries, Other Citizenships

The 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia - National Participation - ALBANIA
Spazio Rolak, Giudecca 211/b, 30133 Venice

For occasion of the 54 Venice Biennale, Anila Rubiku’s work: "Other countries. Other citizenships" deals with the idea of exile. In it we see a room with sixty hats - a common attribute of immigrants – scattered on the floor and sewn with a white thread. On the wall we see cloth hangers and a sentence which reads: “The person who disowns his own language in order to adopt a different one changes identity and disillusions”.

Dwelling on wanting to belong and being the Other, the installation provokes a love for difference. During the first three days of the Biennale, visitors can acquire a pin with the claim: “Hats protect ideas”, in collaboration with the Fondazione Borsalino, addressing exactly of how emigrants are often employed under their intellectual capabilities.

The Albanian´s migration to (West-) Europe in the 80's, motivated by an aspiration for a new life and citizenship, serves thus as leitmotiv to the entire installation. As in most of Anila Rubiku’s installations, which result of collaborative local community projects or workshops, the sixty male hats have been symbolically sewn by emigrated women.

Focusing more on feelings of being in a country and in culture not of your own and not so much in the pure act of leaving, the installation explores social emotional and biographical frequencies.








Laws, Lies, traditions & Convictions










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« People who see my work, often find it very feminine mostly, because I use embroidery as the medium. There is nothing wrong with it but, what interests me most in my work is the time spent in making it and what comes with it. » Anila Rubiku

Albanian by birth and a global nomad currently living between Milan and Tirana, Anila Rubiku is an international artist by character and attitudes. The lines quoted from her are about one particular work but the attitude expressed in it is characteristic of her oeuvre as a whole.
Being a nomad means being on the move not only geographically but also mentally and intellectually. It requires a great deal of flexibility and openness of mind but also keeps you in a constant need for self-definition in various environments. Having no place of your own means that you need to re-contextualise yourself every time you occur in a new setting.
For Rubiku, the journey in physical space is thus also a mental trip. Her desire to be somewhere else, the constant reference to the self finds a personal poetic expression in a larger context, where the works are, by definition, relevant on a global scale, exploring questions and problems of urban space and the individual, industrialisation, urbanisation, architecture and the body.
Rubiku’s work are often done in collaborations with others. An immense number of relevant issues, social, societal, ethnic, historical, gender etc. are raised, for example, in the project “The 16 Ways” organised in Tel Aviv she involved a group of very religious Ethiopian women, to stitch sexual scenes on paper.

Two-time participant of the Venice Biennale and presented broadly internationally, Anila Rubiku appears now for the first time in Belgium , making her debute here in a solo show at the Jozsa Gallery. The exhibition showcases six works:
An installation of 24 drawings, In Harmony takes you inside the most organic clusters of human nature, opening up parts of our inner world that we tend to suppress or even conceal intentionally , although they are natural parts of our inner selves, intrinsicly animalistic as they may appear.
Referred to above, for her embroidery project titled Ain’t I a Woman ? Anila has chosen 100 women who have brought significant changes to our world. All of them made important contributions in various fields, such as physics, medicine, human rights, peace activism or sports. Rubiku’s intention was to call art lovers’ attention to these women. Installing the 100 stitched handkerchiefs in a single space turns the 100 female voices into a strong sound that can make all our wishes come true. The floor of the room of the installation is covered with white beans. This makes it hard to walk in the room, as if visitors were following these women’s uneasy path through life. The silk handkerchiefs are hanging there waiting to be given as a sign of acceptance of an engagement proposition – a proposition that can only come after the recognition of the woman in these females engaged – to use the other sense of this word – in activities that are generally associated with masculinity.
Konrad is series of drawings, an imaginary journey back to the fantasy world of childhood. The drawings are assembled into a kind of foldable storyboard, and the story unfolds on an object, a kind of sculpture, and goes round and then starts again, as if a film were looped. The use of « bad drawing », breaking away from the academic rules of drawing and employing a childlike mode of visual expression instead, liberates the artist from the constraints of time, making memory the ultimate vehicle for the journey. At the same time, the clock, the only object drawn accurately, imposes its constant presence in the composition, as a memento of real time – of reality.
SunSex in Arizona, the version presented in the Jozsa Gallery, includes 6 etchings, two stitchworks on paper, and two watercolours from the series Urban Pornitecture.
Working with students of the Arizona State University on a community project, Rubiku developed her concept of the Relationship of body, sex and the environment. With highrise cities ‘growing’ out of the sand of the desert, Arizona was the ideal place for the project. Scenes of sexual character, sewn on paper, materialise amid the crude environment of the désert. In these works Rubiku re-instates the technique of etching, very similar to stitching in its meticulousness, precision and in being highly time-consuming. Omnipresent in Arizona, cactus stands here for virility and prolificness in a harsh natural environment, and also as a phallic symbol bearing the same associations for human life and urban life in that state of the US.
Even today it’s so contemporary is inspired by an ancient Egyptian legend, whose hero is still worshipped today in a fertility rite. Rubiku points out parallels between the ancient invitation of external help in conceiving a child and today’s practice were the couples rely on cutting-edge technology in pregnancy and childbirth.

Works

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Biography

ANILA RUBIKU (1970, Durres - Albania)

Lives and works between Milan and Tirana, Italy

In 1994 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Tirana and moved to Italy to study at the Academy of Brera, Milan and graduated in 2000.
In 1998 she attended the Advanced Course in Visual Arts at the Ratti Foundation, Como - with visiting professor Hamish Fulton.
In the last ten years she has lived for long spells in various cities abroad (New York, Los Angeles, London and Prague). In 2000 she won the bursary “Artists in Residence” from the Leube Art Program which took her to Vienna (where she attended master courses by Renée Green and Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Akademie Der Bildenden Kunste) and to Salzburg. In October 2004 “Gallery talk at Apexart Gallery, NY” invited her to speak about her work. In 2005 she won the 2nd Prize in the category "Light Sculptures" of the Targetti Light Art Award 2005 and now her work is part of the Targetti Art Collection and London Deutsche Bank collection. In 2007 she was invited by the Jerusalem Center for the Visual Arts as Artist in Residence. She won the ArtsLink Residency October- November 2008 NY, (USA).
Special Projects

2008 One Night Only the U.S. premiere of the video installation at Taliesin West – Frank Lloyd Wright’s national historic landmark home and studio in Scottsdale – in collaboration with ASU Art Museum, Arizona, U.S.A.
2007 Workshop The Ethiopian Embroiderers in collaboration with Jerusalem Centre for Visual Arts( JCVA), Tel Aviv, Israel. Directed by Nirith Nelson.
2006 "Taipei Contemporary Ink Painting Biennal". Taipei, Taiwan.*
2005 Yellow Stickers: Urban intervention project in simultaneously with the 51st Venice Biennale, courtesy Gallery The Flat - Massimo Carasi. (Curated by Elisa Marras).
1999 Workshop and Mercedes Benz Prize Centro d’Arte la Loggia, Montefiridolfi, (FI). Italy. (Directed by Amnon Barzel, Fabio Cavalucci and Pier Luigi Tazzi).*

Solo Exhibitions

2010 Laws, Lies, Traditions & Convictions, Josza Gallery, Brussels. Belgium

2009 Imagine the possibilities, Gallery Alessandro Bagnai. Florence, Italy. (Curated by James Putnam)*

2008 Panoramic Landscapes, Herzliya Museum Israel.

2006 Something in common Gallery Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany.

2005 Object of Desire, Gallery The Flat - Massimo Carasi. Milan, Italy. (Curated by Gabi Scardi).

2004 Viaggio/Trip Studioventicinque, Milan, Italy. (Curated by Paolo Campiglio).*

2001 Home sweet home, Gallery “Il Graffio” in Bologna, Italy. (Curated by Michele Robecchi).

Group Exhibitions

2010 Edition 5 Erstfeld at the Haus für Kunst, Altdorf, Switzerland. Säen und Jäten –Volkskultur in der zeitgenössischen Kunst. Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany.


2009 Fragile, fields of empathy, Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon. South Korea.
Windows onto the Sea, Strasbourg. France (Curated by Dimitri Konstantinidis)*
Fuorisalone 2009, Plusdesign Gallery, Milan, Italy.
Dritto Rovescio, Triennale Museum, Milan, Italy

2008 One Night Only the U.S. premiere of the video installation at Taliesin West – Frank Lloyd Wright’s national historic landmark home and studio in Scottsdale – in collaboration with ASU Art Museum, Arizona, U.S.A.

2007 Ouverture. Privat tales, Hungarian Academy Rome - Palazzo Dei Falconieri, Rome. Italy (Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva & Lorand Hegyi).
2006 L'immagine sottile, Galleria Communale d'Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone. Monfalcone, Italy. (Curated by Andrea Bruciati).*

2005 Viaggio leggero, Niente da perdere, Galleria d’Arte della Provincia di Modena, Chiesa di San Paolo, Modena. Italy. (Curated by Julia Draganovic).*
Zone di Transito, Gallery A+A, Venice, Italy. (Curated by Aurora Fonda ).*

2004 Place for the Self, Apexart, New York ,USA (Curated by Amnon Barzel).*


Selected Awards
2005 2nd Prize category "Light Sculptures" Targetti Light Art Award 2005. Artefiera 2006, Bologna, Italy.
1999 Mercedes Benz Prize Centro d’Arte la Loggia, Montefiridolfi, (FI). Italy.

Public Collections
Israeli Museum Collection, Jerusalem, IL.
Deutsche Bank Collection, London, UK.
Targetti Art Light Collection, Florence, Italy.
Collection of Galleria Comunale dell'Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone, Monfalcone, Italy.
Collection of Anthony and Heather Podesta, Washington, DC.
Edition5 Collection, Erstfeld, Switzerland. *

Press

de crayencour, Muriel. Le fruit de nos entrailles, L'Echo Weekend, 2 octobre 2010, p.41 /in .pdf

Texts

News

• November 12 2011-February 12 2012, Kunst–Stoff. Textilien in der Kunst seit 1960, Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, Germany
• November 7 2011-April 13 2012, Magic Lantern: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art, Bella and Harry Wexner Gallery Israel Museum, Jerusalem
• September 13 – November 18 2011, Solo show Curated by Karin Pernegger & Dagmar Hoss@ Galerie IG BILDENDE KUNST- Wien, Austria - http://www.igbildendekunst.at/kunst/ausstellungen-2011/anila-rubiku-und-nina-hoechtl.htm
  
• June 4 – November 27 Nov 2011, 54th International Venice Biennale 2011 – Albanian Pavilion - http://www.labiennale.org/it/arte/esposizione/partecipazioni-nazionali/