Driant Zeneli: The Valley of Uncanny Lovers

The project Driant Zeneli has created for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb centres around a wondrous and touching film about uncanny lovers, made amid the lithium mining crisis and the fight for environmental and ecological justice in the Western Balkans. The central protagonist of the narrative is a small leaf embodying the fragility and vulnerability of the modern man. Driant Zeneli uses the image of the love-obsessed leaf as a metaphor of complete openness and vulnerability, but also as, paradoxically, a daring hero who uncompromisingly follows his vision regardless of the loss of illusions during his mission.

In other film stories, The Firefly Keeps Falling and the Snake Keeps Growing (2022) and How Deep Can a Dragonfly Swim under the Ocean? (2021), which jointly comprise the intervention in the Richter Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the key protagonists are non-human heroes: a firefly and a dragonfly. Animated, non-human heroes tell tales based on real-life human experiences and specific situations; they are inherently relatable, which defines their significance. Besides, although it doesn’t strive for an external validation of the teleological and deterministic view of the world, the narrative logic of Zeneli’s cinematic fables aspires to a transcendental universality, like any other well-told (cinematic) tale.

The powerful and poetic effects of Zeneli’s narratives are a result of his artistic practice of inviting different communities to collaborate artistically (children, students of specialised courses, prisoners, ecological associations) and a profound knowledge of the special qualities of reality, historical and micro-cultural elements, as well as geopolitical conditions in which his artworks are made. This is particularly visible in the tension between the monumentality of architectural contexts into which Zeneli sets his non-human protagonists, their physical or mechanical fragilities and their symbolical powers to shake up and challenge existing regimes.

The exhibition, curated by Leila Topić, is produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, with the financial support of the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.

Driant Zeneli (1983, Shkoder, Albania) lives in Turin and Tirana.

In 2019 and 2011, he represented the Albanian Pavilion at the 58th (solo show) and 54th (group show) International Art Exhibition—Venice Biennale.

Main exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 2024; 15th Bienal De La Habana, 2024; Ruhr Triennale, Bochum 2024; Maxxi Museum, Rome (2023); Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), Dhaka (2023); 59th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale,(2022); Manifesta Biennial 14, Prishtina (2022); Teatrino Palazzo Grassi, Venice, (2021); 39th EVA International Biennial, Limerick (2020); Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga (2019);  National Gallery of The  Republic of Kosovo, Prishtina (2019); Autostrada Biennale, Prizren, (2019); GAMEC, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bergamo, (2019); Mostyn Gallery, Wales, UK (2017); MuCEM, Marseille, (2016) Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); Villa Medici, Rome (2016); GAM, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Turin (2013); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2012); MUSAC, Castilla León. Spain, (2012); Prague Biennale 5 (2011); National Gallery of Albania, Tirana (2008).