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Shooting Blanks: Anri Sala's Photography and the Heritages of Post-Communist Society
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This paper asserts that artwork created in post-Communist Europe should be examined together with ideas presented in the intellectual discourse responding to the post-Communist condition within the transformational societies of the period. A 2003 photograph by Albanian artist Anri Sala (b. 1973), titled "I Love You," serves as an evidentiary example of the art during this transitional period. Sala photographically disrupts our view of the urbanscape in order to express the frustrations of post-Communist societies as they sought to create order out of chaos by including traces of post-Communist society as its "initial optimism changed to disillusion [when facing] the political, cultural and economic pressures of capitalism and globalism." The paper also compels us to reflect on using "post-Communist methodologies" in the humanities and art history that articulate the ostensible newfound freedoms in the "other" Europes, such as Albania.
Keywords
Post-Communist Societies, Transformation, Photography.
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- Images
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