Adrian Paci / Roland Sejko – Sue proprie mani

Alla fine degli anni 2000 l’Archivio di Stato dell’Albania pubblicò la notizia del ritrovamento, nei suoi magazzini, di due sacchetti di iuta segnati con una semplice etichetta dal titolo: “Corrispondenza dei cittadini italiani in Albania”. In occasione della mostra Architettura in Uniforme Adrian Paci e Roland Sejko riflettono su questa vicenda.

Comunicato stampa

Alla fine degli anni 2000 l’Archivio di Stato dell’Albania pubblicò la notizia del ritrovamento, nei suoi magazzini, di due sacchetti di iuta segnati con una semplice etichetta dal titolo: “Corrispondenza dei cittadini italiani in Albania”.

Centinaia di lettere
separate dalle proprie buste e messe alla rinfusa.
Non sono mai giunte a destinazione…

In occasione della mostra Architettura in Uniforme Adrian Paci e Roland Sejko riflettono su questa vicenda.

Una videoinstallazione mostra attori di provenienza internazionale che interpretano frammenti di alcune di quelle lettere.
Uno spazio, che accoglie le stampe delle lettere, diventa una mappa, una presenza fisica di queste tracce di comunicazione mai giunte a destinazione.

Gli autori ringraziano per la collaborazione L’Archivio di Stato dell’Albania.

SUE PROPRIE MANI
by Adrian Paci and Roland Sejko

A reflection on recent Italian history
on the occasion of the exhibition Architettura in Uniforme

April 2 – June 7, 2015

www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Rome March 16, 2015. The exhibition Architettura in Uniforme, currently at the MAXXI until May 3, 2015, has brought to the Museum the personal histories of architects, inventions, discoveries, stories of creation but also of the destruction of a historical period, between 1939 and 1945, after which the whole world has never been the same again.

This exhibition becomes the occasion for Sue Proprie Mani a special project by Adrian Paci and Roland Sejko, commissioned by MAXXI Arte, directed by Anna Mattirolo, on view from April 2 to June 7, 2015 together with the one, again commissioned by MAXXI Arte, by Flavio Favelli Gli angeli degli eroi. Both projects represent a reflection on our recent history.

The outcome of the collaboration between Adrian Paci (Scutari, Albania, 1969, living in Milan) among the most interesting artists operating in Italy, and Roland Sejko (Elbasan, Albania, 1968, living in Rome) director, winner of a David di Donatello with the documentary Anija - La Nave on the migration of the Albanians to Italy in the early 1990s, Sue Proprie Mani, curated by Cristiana Perrella, is a reflection on the theme of being uprooted and the forced separation from one’s homeland, on history read throught he dramatic subjective experience, inspired by a little-known event that took place in postwar Italy. Sue Proprie Mani begins from some news dating back to just a few years ago: the discovery in the warehouses of the Albanian State Archives of two jute sacks bearing the label "Correspondence of Italian citizens in Albania." Hundreds of letters, mostly written between 1945 and 1946, by the Italians who, at the end of the Second World War, were in Albania awaiting repatriation, and by their relatives in Italy. Letters that never reached their destination. “Dear mother, three years have already gone by since we last saw each other, and sixteen months since I last received your news.” “We’ll never know when we’ll be repatriated, if they will indeed repatriate us…” “Dear father, I heard the bombing…” “After months and months since I last had your news about your arrival, I can no longer hide the truth, your father passed away eight months ago.”
These are pieces of the lives of the Italians who stayed in Albania at the end of 1944, about 24,000 of them, including former soldiers, workers, doctors, people in sales, engineers, who arrived during the Italian occupation, and who, at the end of the war with Enver Hoxha’s rise to power, ended up being trapped there unable to return home, pawns in a political game that would last until 1949, when Italy and Albania established diplomatic relations. Filmed in the former palace of King Zog in Durazzo, Sue Proprie Mani is a video installation on five huge screens, in each of which the camera, with a very slow movement, seeks, discovers and caresses six characters. They are ambigious presences, dressed in period clothes, each one holding a letter. Perhaps addressees, perhaps senders, perhaps only witnesses, they appear and disappear before our gaze, while in the background we can hear fragments of those unread letters.
Sue Proprie Mani is a work that brings to light a true story, elaborating its emotional and historical weight, expressing an exploration of a universal nature on the theme of loss, incommunicability, the eruption of historic events in personal fates. Along with the video installation prints of the letters are exhibited as well: an illegible but at the same time eloquent map made up of the traces of an interrupted communication.
For Sue Proprie Mani we wish to thank the State Archive of Albania, Herno, Apulia Film Commission, Poste Italiane, Farani Sartoria Teatrale (Rome), Musagates, galleria kaufmann repetto (Milan-New York), Peter Kilchmann gallery (Zurich). The work is produced by Kube Studios, Tirana, costumes by Antonella Cannarozzi.