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intact. These are three difficult and surreal
works that emphasize the human possibility
to overcome limitations through imagination,
as does Unlikely Collision (2014) where, si-
mulating a NASA project of the fifties, several
drones hovered in the exhibition space offe-
ring a possible answer to the theory of the
collision of bodies. Another example consists
of a conspicuous series of ambient works in
the field of visual arts. All art has been …
temporary (2008) is based on the concept of
“what if” – the real leitmotiv in the work of
Zeneli (in this specific instance the loss of
some letters that made up a brilliant corre-
spondence with Maurizio Nannucci at GAM
in Turin) – in which he observes how the per-
ception of mute things varies radically, al-
though content remains, from their original
status; In Bankrupt Artists lesson n°… (2008-
ongoing) several teachers at schools, colleges,
and universities provide instruction on the
concept of failure; in The art pacemaker
(2013), a guided tour of galleries and art in-
stitutions is organized in the form of mara-
thon; in The Flatland (2014), a number of
academy students, coming from different di-
sciplines, bring to life a variety of readings of
Lezioni americane by Italo Calvino; Atelier
Albania (2015), compares the stereotypical
image of Albania in communist times (repre-
sented by the mosaic Shqiperia, on the facade
of the Historical Museum of Tirana since
1981) and the present (personified by a group
of students that turn the museum into a crea-
tive laboratory, allowing once again for one
of the most distinct aspects of Zenelli’s art to
emerge, the identification of people as integral
components of the work); and Le pension-
naire absent (2016) draws inspiration from
the absence of a painting kept in the Salon
de pensionnairesa Villa Medici, and imagina-
tively rewrites the story of its protagonist gi-
ving him an entirely unexpected appearance.
History and the dreamlike components that
genetically feed it (after all hasn’t it been
dreams that have continuously determined
events?) has almost always been at the foun-
dation of Zeneli’s interventions. This is nar-
rated by his protagonists with their voices fil-
tered through the grates of a confessional in
The Confessional (2007); by the social, poli-
tical, and economic state of the country of
Albania, and the visible evidence of its tran-
sformations in This is a Castle (2010); and by
the real mass compared to the fictitious one
depicted in Venezia (2016), where the city
represented in the video is not the original
but its industrial replication in Antalya, Tur-
key. This is the narrative of the individual, in
which the artist makes himself a pretext to
address, at the same time, another central
theme in his research: cultural identity (Born
in U.S and A., 2007: Albanian Souvenir,
2009.) How is it defined? What affects its con-
struction? By referencing the present as well
as the past, Driant Zeneli questions the rules,
and the racial and political stereotypes that
construct boundaries, as well as the illusions,
the hopes, the disappointments – namely the
dreams – that govern their development.
Pier Paolo Pancotto
Unlikely Collisions,
2014, performance
Courtesy of the artist e /
and prometeogallery
di Ida Pisani Milan / Lucca
Foto / Photo: Davide Tremolada
