Ekspozita “Conversing / Agitating the ‘90s” te “Zeta Contemporary” Tiranë
Conversing / Agitating the ‘90s
Alban Hajdinaj / The Estate of Armando Lulaj
(Viktor Strato, David Kampi, Manifesto Collective)
Co-Curated by: The Flying Curators
(Mariko Mikami & An Paenhuysen)
📅 December 13, 2025 – January 20, 2026
🕕 Vernissage: December 13, 18:00
📍 Venue: ZETA Center for Contemporary Art
Hekla Center, Abdyl Frashëri Street, Nd. 8, H.7, Ap. 4 (2nd floor), 1019 Tirana, Albania.
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“Conversing / Agitating the ‘90s” began with an idea of the flea market as the perfect museum: an open space where things and stories circulate, unregulated by governance, packed with amateur knowledge and emotions, and offering a platform accessible to everyone worldwide. The curators of “Conversing / Agitating the ‘90s,” calling themselves Flying Curators, who enjoy traveling formats and thoughts, invited artists Alban Hajdinaj (1974-) and Armando Lulaj (1980-2021) in Tirana, whose artistic practice involves what one of them called being “second hands.” With them, this exhibition aims to explore the ‘90s, a tumultuous period in Albania, when history unfolded, and a time when both artists, as young students, transitioned into contemporary artists. The artists looked through their personal belongings in storage, archives, and went as far as the back of their minds. Treasures are often found in forgotten corners, dark spaces, or in the junk box. One artist wrote: “I found the archival material I was looking for. (…) I was stressed because I thought I’d lost them. But everything was in a small hidden folder…” For the first time, this dead material is now momentarily exposed to the outside so that the light and sound can come in. Amateur historians, confabulators, detectives, gossipers, ghosts, storytellers, and even alter egos of the artist haunt the space, chasing what imagination can resurrect. Exhaled smoke curls and drifts between them, carrying whispered voices of the ‘90s. Both conversing and agitating are modalities of movement. Their dynamics craft encounters that are not fixed or static but rather sustain ongoing processes of transformation. Their participants cannot go back to the same places they left before.
