Anri Sala
Born in Tirana/Albania, 1974
Lives and works in Berlin
This is the first thing I did when I came to Paris and nearly the first time I was working with a computer program. That was in 1997. From a turn-of-the-century photograph taken by an Albanian photographer of Italian origin who established himself in the North of Albania, in a town called Shkodra. You can see from the photo that it was taken at the beginning of the century in some part of the Ottoman Empire, as Albania was part of this empire at the time. It was the first time a photographer's studio appeared in this town, and they say people were so surprised when they saw themselves on photographic paper and so on. In this photo you see three women, two Muslims and one catholic, sewing with a sewing machine.
I prepared a fabric with Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe... It's just a joke about taboos, especially taboos in Albania in relation with this woman being naked, this foreign body... but also about the first reaction to this painting when it was first shown in Paris. So in the film's animation, the women are sewing the painting in order to dress the naked women as themselves, in traditional North Albanian dress. It was a little bitter, not only about the gap but also about the different contexts.
--Anri Sala
Born in Tirana/Albania, 1974
Lives and works in Berlin
This is the first thing I did when I came to Paris and nearly the first time I was working with a computer program. That was in 1997. From a turn-of-the-century photograph taken by an Albanian photographer of Italian origin who established himself in the North of Albania, in a town called Shkodra. You can see from the photo that it was taken at the beginning of the century in some part of the Ottoman Empire, as Albania was part of this empire at the time. It was the first time a photographer's studio appeared in this town, and they say people were so surprised when they saw themselves on photographic paper and so on. In this photo you see three women, two Muslims and one catholic, sewing with a sewing machine.
I prepared a fabric with Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe... It's just a joke about taboos, especially taboos in Albania in relation with this woman being naked, this foreign body... but also about the first reaction to this painting when it was first shown in Paris. So in the film's animation, the women are sewing the painting in order to dress the naked women as themselves, in traditional North Albanian dress. It was a little bitter, not only about the gap but also about the different contexts.
--Anri Sala
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