Curator: Claudia Maria Luenig, Austria

July 15 to September 10, 2004

Support: Kunst Bundeskanzleramt, Austria

ReAffiliations: Sightings/Wahrnehmungen është titulli i një ekspozite ndërkombëtare shëtitëse e grave artiste:
shtatë australiane, pesë austriake, dy sllovene, katër maqedonase, gjashtë bullgare dhe katër artiste
shqiptare. Ekspozita është kombinimi i dy temave të mëdha të identitetit kulturor njerëzor/femëror: Nëna dhe
Emigrimi.
Histori të shumëfishta i gjen në temat e emigrimit dhe të mëmësisë dhe në kryqëzimin midis tyre: dhimbje,
dashuri, vlerësim, tërbimin, mirëkuptimin, miqësinë, identitetin, afërsinë dhe intimitetin.
Lëvizja e ekspozitës ReAffiliations përmes vendeve të Evropës Lindore sjell një aspekt interesante dhe në
ndryshim. Një shumllojshmëri moshash, praktikash artistike dhe konceptesh sjell këndvështime të pjekura,
variacione dhe ndryshime në konstelacionin e ekspozitës dhe të punëve të prodhuara. Artistët e rinj i japin
konceptin e tyre dhe perceptimin pamor të subjektit Mëmë/ Vajzë/ dhe/ose Emigrim. Veprat e artit që janë
pjesë e ekspozitës variojnë nga skulptura te fotografia, video, instalacioni, objekit i artit, projeksionet dhe
printet.
Në Tiranë artistet shqiptare që iu shtuan ekspozitës ReAffiliation janë Elsa Martini, Ikbal Beli, Fabiola Jozja
dhe Doris Sala, duke u prezantuar në përgjithësi me punë në fushën e fotografisë. Për vitin 2005 vende si Beogradi, Krakovi, Bukureshti, Talini dhe Haifa janë planifikuar të jenë pritësit e ekspozitës.

ReAffiliations: Sightings/Wahrnehmungen in the Cultural Center Lindart, Tirana.

Claudia Maria Luenig, curator
ReAffiliations: Sightings/Wahrnehmungen is the title of an international women’s touring exhibition of seven
Australian, five Austrian, two Slovenian, four Macedonian, six Bulgarian and four Albanian women artists. The
exhibition combines two major themes of human or female/cultural identity: Mother and Migration.
Multiple stories are present in issues of migration and mothering and the crossovers between them: Pain,
love, appreciation, rage, understanding, friendship, identity, closeness and privacy.
The touring of ReAffiliations through countries of Eastern Europe brings an interesting and challenging aspect
to this exhibition. At each new location 4-5 new women artists are joining the existing formation. A varied range
of age, art practices and concepts provides viewpoints of maturity, variation and challenges to the constellation
of the show and the produced works. The new artists offer their concepts and visual perception of the subject
Mother/Daughter and/or Migration. The artworks currently in the exhibition display media ranging from sculpture, photography, video, installation, object art, projection and prints.
In Tirana the Albanian artists Elsa Martini, Ikbal Beli, Fabiola Jozja and Doris Sala are joining ReAffiliations
who are presenting mainly photography-based work.
For 2005 locations like Belgrade, Krakow, Bucharest, Tallinn and Haifa are planned for further touring.

Artists: Beate Anna Hoy&Agnes Harreer (Austri/Austria), Clare Martin (Afrika e Jugut/South Africa),
Claudia-Maria Luenig (Gjermani/Germany), Elena Panajotova (Bullgari/Bulgaria), Elizabeta Avramovska
(Maqedoni/Macedonia), Eva Brunner Szabo (Austri/Austria), Evelina Hanzhieva (Bullgari/Bulgaria),
Hanh Ngo (Vietnam), Hristina Ivanovska (Maqedoni/Macedonia), Irena Paskali (Maqedoni/Macedonia),
Kalina Dimitrova (Bullgari/Bulgaria), Lisa Jeong (Australi/Australia), Madelaine Neveu (Kili/Chili), Margaret Sanders (Australi/Australia), Maria Stukoff (Australi/Australia), Monika Popova (Bullgari/Bulgaria), Sini Coreth (Austri/Australia), Slavica Janeslieva (Maqedoni/Macedonia), Sylvia Kranawetvogl (Austri/Austria), Virginia Pencheva & Nina E. Ivanova (Bullgari/Bulgaria), Wang Huqing (Kinë/China), Zora Stancic (Slloveni/Slovenia), Elsa Martini (Shqipëri/Albania), Ikbal Beli (Shqipëri/Albania), Fabiola Jozja (Shqipëri-France/Albania-France); Doris Sala (Shqiperi-Zvicer/Albania-Swiss).

Short descriptions of projects by the following artists:

Lisa Jeong (born 1968 in Sydney, Australia) playfully uses Chinese customs and superstitions in her work and turns them into games. Piano hammers knock like ghosts on a fading image of a Chinese woman. These pieces touch on the experience of foreigness, the ambivalence of the Mother/Daughter relationship, often formed by the difficulty to recognise clearly.

Claudia Maria Luenig (born 1957 in Herbern, Germany) represents in her mixed media installation the
transformation of her work through time and distance. Once the works of the mother who also paints and draws
were part of the installation. Now a performance of a meeting the two after some time is included. Therefore
documents of a familial connection, harmonious or differential, change and exist over time and through changes.

Clare Martin (born 1952 in Grahamstown, South Africa), presents childhood memories form South Africa in the form of a self built oversized dressing table, meanwhile appearing as a CD Rom in ´travel form´. Interwined in this personal examination is an English colonial presence in South Africa: a white woman at her dressing table reinforcing her whiteness by using powder and perfume. Her mother could only be accepted into the white
society by using perfect make-up to appear ´socially acceptable´.

Madelaine Neveu (born 1963 in Santiago, Chile) uses materials like sand, stones, bones, roots and former
insect cages to capture elusive feelings of a shifting identy; where age is now equated with beauty, where she
has achieved a serenity about herself, her sexuality and her relations with her mother. There are images of
seperation, of leaving, and of returning anew; a rebirth comes with maturity.

Hanh Ngô (born 1971 in Kein Giang, Vietnam) tells us in various elements that Vietnamese women’s labour
and duties have been subsumed beneath the constant requirement that their work provides evidence of their
submission to and dependency on men. Photos of the men in Hanh’s family are printed on footbinding cloth,
she has woven herself and bloodred fans are handpricked with fragments of a language foreign to us.

Margaret Sanders (born 1957 in Bunbury, Australia) presents a book of drawings in which she explores and
commemorates her memory of her first childhood gardening with her mother. Delicately the prints evoke the
ineffable quality of memory: fine nuances of intensity and strength of patterning. Like memory they appear
responsive and ongoing.

Maria Stukoff (born 1969 in Southport, Australia ) evokes somehow bitter or uneasy reflections through
computergraphic and laserprint: death, illness and ageing. Currently the artist has used images her mother
has taken with her camera in earlier days and incorporated them into her work. Mother and daughter seem to
move closer towards each other, melting into in the image. Real life will prove its own case.

Sylvia Kranawetvogl (born 1968 in Salzburg, Austria, a guest artist since ReAffiliations was shown at CULT
gallery in 1999) presents images from a video with sound, which indicate that migration moves towards the
globalised future questioning how our major cities maintain individuality and if not is it a case of nationality and
history being void?

Agnes Harrer & Beate Hoy (born 1967 in Graz and 1966 in Kärnten, Austria) both offer a podium for the
position of the housewives, like their mothers, as an exchange. ´It is an art to be a housewife´. The interplay of
projection and sound underlines the issues of the housewife`s existence in the domestic field.

Sini Coreth (born 1939 in Melk, Austria) examines the family pattern that has formed itself over four generations in the female line. She has lived in various countries like Italy, France, Egypt, Japan, USA, Senegal and Switzerland. Every female in the family line has pushed away sexuality, negated the physical.

Zora Stancic ( born 1956 in Strbe, Bosnia/Herzegovina), reflects issues of cultural identities in her photographic and graphic work. The work is positioned in context to books, magazines and graphic sources.

Wang Huiqin (born 1955 in Nantong, Province Jangtsu, China) analyses in her large scale graphic works the
time she spend with her grandparents in China and specifically the bound feet of her grandmother which
represent a symbol of female beauty in China.

Eva Brunner-Szabo (born 1961 in Oberwart, Burgenland, Austria) “continues to work on an archeology of
images. In her (video and film) work she combines personal stories and associations with ´found footage´
images of the story which is then loaded with individual experience.” (Birgit Flos)

Slavica Janeslieva (born 1973, in Skopje, R. Macedonia) analyses in her object-installation the relationship
with her mother since its beginning. What the baby first sees in the mother's face is a reaction to itself; the face reflects the child back to him/herself. What it sees, then, is affirmation or negation...The face as a precursor to the mirror. She also presents the instructive urge for identification with her mother; physical and intellectual resemblance.

Irena Paskali (born 1969, in Ohrid, R. Macedonia). Her art works (video and digital print) are connected with the present status of Macedonia within the international frameworks and her personal reflection of the everyday life towards her creativity (how does she feel as an artist and as a citizen of Macedonia during these times).

Elizabeta Avramovska (born 1956, in Skopje, R. Macedonia) and Hristina Ivanovska (born 1974 in Skopje,
R.Macedonia) present: The Anthropological Reading of the closeness,2003. This mutual project of ours resulted from our different reading of the relationship between mother-daughter, concerning the assigned subject matter.
"The anthropological reading ..." is a project in process and we treat it as an approach to the creative
relationship with our mothers and our intimate feelings, as well as to the influences and reactions of the specific dialogue we have with them. Part of our intimate atmosphere and the characteristics of the artistic we dislocate from the context of the exhibition that functions as an experiment and process open for changes.
To fulfill the objective seeing and some curator's view, we included Jane Calovski into this project letting him help us with the contextual reading of this project in process.

Doris Sala' s photos are showing the deep desire of a young girl and daughter to escape from the 'dictate' of her own mother/ family, to save her own identity in a simple little sunny house build only for herself and the family of her dreams using clear defining black lines. She is Albanian studying in Switzerland for the last two years.

The old couple on the photo made by Albanian artist Ikbal Beli is seen after a long walk through their life; they are sited beside the road holding each other by hand, some poor bags next to them as a symbol of property/home. A bicycle in the background talks to us much about movement, loneliness and true love.

Elsa Martini from Albania shows us another type of relationship that of the dualism/changing/movement. She wants to escape from herself and be liberated from the old mask. The photos of her triptych represent the mask the others build on our own face, the prison the old mentality is.

'We depend on our own power' is a slogan written on a naked female breast of a young woman, and that is the photo of Fabiola Jozja. She lives in France, married with a French young artist. She left Albania carrying with her this old slogan of the real socialism propaganda. After the fall of Berlin's wall, after the failure of the monist system in Albania, this slogan may now be translated in many ways: 'We depend on our own power '- sexuality; ‘We depend on our own power ' - independence'; 'We depend on our own power ' - personality. Being an immigrant, she carries on an old and new ideology, living the ambiguity of being an Albanian born woman living in France.