Art House School is a residency program started in 2017, welcoming young Albanian artists to participate in a process of sharing knowledge, practices and mutual experiences.

Over the years the program has offered a platform to create a dialogue between artists, curators and practitioners from the Albanian contemporary art scene and beyond, nourishing and sustaining a space for cultural and artistic exchange that not only contributes to new artistic opportunities but also to an enriching critical discourse. 

10 artists from Albania and the Balkans were selected to become part of the residency program: Saša Tatić, Luka Cvetkovic, Jozefina Vokrri, Nora Bzheta, Elsamina Musiq, Nazli Moripek, Xhulian Millaj, Laura Paja, Samela Balazi, Jona Krasniqi. 

The theme was “What’s left?”. After such a massive event as the pandemic,  which has shaken people’s existence on a global scale, we believed a renewed normality would have been restored. Then we realized the cracks were just widening open. With the brutality that keeps unfolding in the world, one can’t help but constantly feel as if we’re living in the aftermath of a catastrophe. What comes after the exhaustion and the devastation? What are we left with? On a collective and more intimate scale these will be the questions guiding our thinking and practice through the next edition of Art House School.

Two mentors, Stefano Romano and Tea Paci and two international guest curators, Maja Ćirić and Roberto Pinto accompanied the group through the residency’s activities.

All the participants then worked together on a synthesis to define the most important topics in relation to the general theme of this edition. The result of this synthesis will be the working basis for producing a fanzine that will include a collective reflection on the two directions of the general theme; what remains of our present and what needs to be done to think about the future, by transforming the experience of the Art House School into a methodology to be used in the development of one’s own artistic research.

This residency program was supported by the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation of Albania, Europe House and European Union Delegation to Albania.