Anri Sala: Dammi i Colori
Dammi i Colori (2003) is a 16–minute video by Albanian artist Anri Sala which chronicles the work of Sala’s friend and former artist Edi Rama as Mayor of Tirana, Albania. Dammi i Colori evokes the city as canvas and champions art as a means for social transformation. Edi Rama became mayor of Tirana in 2000, and quickly went about re-painting the capital’s decaying buildings in brilliant, provocative colors and patterns. His aesthetic and political act was a powerful visualization of change—a source of both public debate and renewed civic pride.
The exhibition accompanies Citizen Culture: Artists and Architects Shape Policy, organized by independent curator Lucía Sanromán. Citizen Culture celebrates the power of art to spark dialogue, create new modes of civic engagement, and transform the laws by which cities and citizens are governed.
Anri Sala (b. 1974, Tirana, Albania) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He studied painting at the National Academy of Arts in Tirana, video at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and film directing at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing, France. In 2001, he received the Young Artist Prize at the 49th Venice Biennale. His works have been widely shown internationally, at institutions including MAMCO, Geneva; Dallas Museum of Art; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He also participated in the 49th, 50th, and 55th Venice Biennales; the 24th Bienal de Sao Paolo; Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt, Germany and Uniform: Order and Disorder at MoMA/P.S. 1, New York.
