The Albanian pavilion, presented by the artist Lumturi Blloshmi, curated by Adela Demetja, opened on Thursday at the Arsenaleale premises at the Venice International Biennale.

In this 59th edition, Albania comes for the first time with a personal exhibition of a woman artist who is no longer alive.

The opening ceremony was greeted by the Minister of Culture, Elva Margariti, who, among other things, said that “Lumturi  Blloshmi is a symbol of transcendence. Overcoming any kind of difficulty that life faces.

“Lumturi Blloshmi is a symbol of her generation, who created in a wild period for art and then faced the changes of political systems, which forced her to run to catch the lost time under dictatorship,” said the minister.

Margariti described the exhibition as an authentic Albanian piece, which is presented to the world as a personal story, but also as a representative of a generation of artists who overcame the barriers of the regime, starting from the beginning every time.

“I am pleased that this year we have at the Biennale a mostly female team, preceded by Lumja, Adela and the staff that made possible the establishment of this pavilion, in a format that, as much as it reveals, leaves us with a taste of mystery and the desire to discover more about an artist’s world; which fits best with the general concept of this edition, which is curated by Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian woman in this important position “, said Margariti.

While the curator Adela Demetja said that it is never too late to do the right thing, which means promoting the work of Lumturi Blloshmi.

“Lumja has left us a very rich archive, stretched over a long period of time. “She left us works, manuscripts, letters, through which we understand her world and the context where she lived”, said Demetja.

Also present was the artist’s nephew, Ervin Blloshmi, who said that Lumja “married her art”, lived for her and overcame all the obstacles that life faced.

The opening ceremony was attended by many art-loving artists from Albania and Kosovo and the Albanian pavilion was visited by world art and culture personalities.

Artist Blloshmi passed away in 2020 due to COVID-19.