Sounding Art Histories is an audio series aimed at promoting debates in relation to Albanian art history and its relationship to politics. Developed in conjunction with the Albanian Handbook for Art and Education, an open access, collective research exploring the theme of art and education in Albania, the ‘histories’ presented here are envisioned as plural, in an effort to overcome the predominance of any single narrative or perspective, and to offer the ground from which a plethora of critical viewpoints can emerge. The following episode, waiting for the 90s, features a conversation between cultural theorist Jonida Gashi, art historian Raino Isto and Cold War historian Ylber Marku.

Bulevard presents a solo exhibition by Ilir Kaso, opening at Galeria Hermon Madhi, the gallery space of the Jordan Misja Artistic High School in Tirana, opening on October 30th at 18:00.

The exhibition explores the life and practice of Ilir Kaso, spanning twenty years of artistic experimentation and his engagement with both institutional and independent art education in Albania.
Challenging the meaning of an artist retrospective, Kaso invites us to reflect on: What does it mean to return? And how do we learn in the process? The six selected works—drawn from Kaso’s extensive and lifelong artistic production across various media—are curated as an invitation to pause. By imagining each work as a ‘lesson’ the artist gives space and time to the act of self-narration, confronting tensions between the personal and the political. Kasos’s work traces a life in which generational trauma, migration, environment, conflict, and friendship can be reimagined as spaces of mutual care amid isolation and fear.

DYZUAR by Orestia Kapidani

For the 2025 edition of the bulevard show, bulevard presents Dyzuar an ongoing work by Orestia Kapidani. Happening on the 25th of September at 19:00 at Dyqan, a shop and bar at the very end of the New Bulevard.
During the summer, the artist together with a group of companions, have started the investigation on the New Bulevard. Kapidani choose cyanotype as a way to explore how a place can be documented and archived. With “Dyzuar” the artist shows that the process of analogue photography can set an economy of time that resists gentrification as it opens up shared imaginaries, starting from personal memories.

bulevard art & media institute is pleased to announce the 4th edition of Lule Maji: A Reservoir of Care, Love, Rebellion.

Woven over two years of conversations between Silvi Naçi and Valentina Bonizzi, and shaped through their expanded work with the community at Aleanca LGBT, A Reservoir of Care, Love, Rebellion is a proposal for a commons shared between local and diasporic communities through art, activism, and the archive. A reservoir is imagined here as a collaborative space—a commons—where we build a language and praxis of solidarity through being present with one another.

The project brings three elements into dialogue: HomeSpace, the first public archive to preserve Albanian queer heritage; the travel iteration of the show Wrapped in the Shadow of Freedom, which explores queerness and its contemporary complexities, first shown in Prishtina in 2024 and organized by Sekhmet Institute; and Posta e Dashurisë, an ongoing weekly gathering focused on communal care through letter writing, artist presentations, and a shared meal.

In response to the current political climate that seeks to weaken practices of care within communities—by defining love, threating trans rights and life, and menacing freedom in the face of poverty, war, and genocide—A Reservoir of Care, Love, Rebellion asserts that, as queer, trans, migrant, and refugee bodies, we are not asking permission to participate in the formulation of new vocabularies and practices; we are taking charge and shaping the revolution together.

The show invites visitors to look closely, listen deeply, reflect, play, experiment, and reformulate grounds where new ontologies can be possible.

Raino Isto will present the social and political connotations of the artist’s studio in Western art history, considering its possibilities in the Albanian context.

***The Albanian Glossary for Contemporary Art is a process-based document that explores terms and concepts often used in critical discourse through an Albanian perspective.

The Urgent (artist) Open Studio focuses on developing critical dialogue by offering space and mentorship to young artists in Albania.

For the third year, with a stronger urgency to share gender struggles and aesthetic challenges, on this year’s International Women Day, bulevard has commissioned artists Anna Ehrenstein, Blerta Kambo, Iva Lulashi, Ledia Kostandini, Lori Lako and Merita Selimi to create posters that will be distributed free of charge at the 8 of March protest.

Come at 11am on 8 March at Sheshi Nënë Tereza in Tirana, to pick up your poster, mark your own, and join the march in solidarity and sisterhood!

Artwork in the poster by Merisa Hasrama

On the 21st of February at 19:00, bulevard invites you to the presentation of the work of Astrit Ismaili. Following the presentation of key works in the career of the performance artist, everyone will be immersed in an open rehearsal led by Ismaili reflecting a three days performance workshop under the theme “Creative Under Limitation” a notion deriving from the artist's practice. During the course of three intensive workshop days, happening during the week celebrating Kosovo Independence, Ismaili proposes to explore “limitations” through fiction, history, and personal subjects.

We invite you all to experience a process entailing fictional and historical material, to generate character building and embodiment. The artist invites us to enter the complexities of making a performance or a performative work.

Hajde to celebrate this special Lule Kosova 2025 with us!

KafeKokoshka is happening again! This year bulevard has invited artist Genny Petrotta to present a series of works produced around her film Mamma Perdonami / Mëma Më Fal (2023 ) developed at her village of origin, Piana degli Albanesi, in Sicily. This avant-garde work re-imagines a tragically forgotten moment in December, 1944 when Arbëreshë revolutionaries briefly created a mountainous peasant republic.

In dialogue with the Albanian Cinematheque, Genny chose to invite Fatmir Koçi whom she met in 2007 in her home town, as he was shooting his documentary essay Via Mare Adriatico, featuring Genny as a young Arbëreshë teen. This rarely screened doc highlights the filmmaker's quest to understand the Arbëreshë, making his way through Sicilian villages and watching old communist newsreels shot in the ethnic Albanian community

Both Genny Petrotta and Fatmir Koçi will be present to take part in a discussion with Albanian Cinematheque director, Iris Elezi.

Kafe dhe Kokoshka will be served!

An Independent Book Fair is happening again! A special third edition brought together with 28 November. Save the dates to buy books from independent publishers and hang around a rainbow crowd from Albania, Kosovo and many other places around the globe.

Free to all, come to hang out, be inspired, and buy books!

with:

28 November, Angel Hubris & Studio Zajmi, After8 Books, Alexander Till, ArtHouse, Asparagus Plumosa, AVARIE, B*ks Verlag, Bazament, Berk, bulevard, Byunknow, Commentarivm, Dritëhije, Fondacioni Lumbardhi, Fora Magazine, Galeria e Bregdetit, GIRLS, GoraGora Books, Kahmos Çkamos, KEDA*PRESS, Kosovo 2.0, Lirindja, Literatura Anarkiste, Kurdistan Solidarity Network, meDiell, Nepotik, Nisesos, Not Only Publications, Onagöre, Oral History Kosovo, Palazzo Bronzo, Pararoja, Pika Pa Sipërfaqe, Pink House Press, Potpuri, Private Print, Pykë-Presje, Rab-Rab Press, Replikat Press, Saz’iso, Sherebel, StoryLab, SubSeri, suppergiù, Tirana Art Lab, Vjosa Maxhuni, Zeta Galeri.

kids corner curated by Trekëndor!

bulevard presents of six emerging artists: Nadia Abazi, Samela Balazi, Egi Mali, Erald Nezaj, Renid Tosuni, Doris Vila.

The works in the show have been developed over the course of several months as part of the Urgent (artists) Open Studio and are now entering in dialogue with the public. Over this time, the artists have worked through several phases of research and production. These phases serve as a platform for artists to meet with each other, as well as with international curators, gallerists, and Albanian artists and art workers from various generations, navigating questions of practice, space, identity, and criticality.

***The Urgent (artists) Open Studio is a project by bulevard that offers space to show works by emerging artists in Albania while focusing on research, production and critical dialogue.

Bulevard is pleased to present Living Bridges, a work by Wurmkos commissioned by Bulevard and developed during the course of two years in occasion of the Bulevard Show 2023 and 2024.

The process embodies a series of laboratories in Tirana and Sesto San Giovanni (Milan), an urban intervention, a public presentation and event.

The final restitution of the work will happen in occasion of the Bulevard Show 2024, the 23rd of September, through a convivial event outside the Bulevard which will be connected by a continuous drawing made with the materials produced in Tirana and Sesto San Giovanni to the exhibition in the gallery space of Bulevard.

The work intervenes in the space of a “temporary aperture”, a crack in the urban texture made by the breaking down of a building designed by the Albanian artist and architect Maks Velo. Combining the concept of ‘mutual aid’ as developed by Wurmkos and Bulevard research on gossip, Living Bridges is a visual work that shows a way of working with space and time that creates relationships that can be autonomous, free and collective.

Lule Shqiponja brings An Independent Book Fair to Venice as part of Index Art Book Fair in honor of their 10th anniversary. We will be showcasing our collaborating independent publishers from Albania, Kosovo and beyond in IABF's first satellite edition in Venice. Independent publishers: 28 November, ArtHouse, Berk, Bulevard, GIRLS, Kahmos Çkamos, Literatura Anarkiste, Nepotik, Nisesos, Oral History Kosovo, Pararoja, Pika pa Sipërfaqe, Potpuri, PrivatePrint, Sherebel, Shtatëmbëdhjetë, StoryLab, Tirana Art Lab and Zeta Contemporary Art Center.

Happy to be sharing space with : TABF, African Art Book Fair, Arts of the Working Class, Bergen Art Book Fair, Books are Bridges, Border less, Gairo Art Book Fair, Fair Enough Tallin, I Never Read Basel, Libros Mutantes, Miss, Read, OAZA Collective, Taipei Art Book Fair and Yogyakarta Art Book Fair.

The Art of Unfolding: I Will Tell Your Resistance and You Will Tell Mine

It was 1993 when Riet van der Linden came for the first time to Albania. On that occasion she gave a seminar related to her work with the Dutch Women movement - Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeldende Kunst - and as co - founder of the International Organization for Women in the Arts. She also visited several of these artists' studios, mostly based in their homes. The same year the Albanian women artists that Riet met, founded Linda, the Albanian Women Artists Association which existed between 1993 and 2010. Riet and Eleni Laperi, the president of Linda, kept correspondence until 1995. Thirty years later, in 2023, Riet was in Albania, invited by Bulevard for the program Diaries, The Archive as Encounter, a work that deals with the theme of the archive through the several forms that memory can take starting from ‘the personal’, to understand again, what kind of relationship and economies ‘the political’ needs in contemporary society.

Showcase commemorating 4 years of Pararoja. Pararoja is an independent publishing house founded in 2020 by Olson Lamaj in response to the need to promote visual artists' stories in the form of fanzines. Each issue of the magazine is dedicated to a contemporary artist who shares their research on a particular visual story they have explored. The zines produced by Pararoja are made in limited quantities and printed as black and white photocopies. The project aims to explore alternative editorial possibilities offered by the artist's book, fanzines, posters, and other self-produced artistic materials.

Featuring: Abi Shehu, Anna Ehrenstein, Atdhe Mulla, Blerta Hocia, Branislav Nikolic, Dritan Hyska, Driton Selmani, La Societe Spectrale, Ledia Kostandini, Marina Sula, Nevena Dzamonja, Olson Lamaj, Pauline Alioua, Raino Isto and the recently published zines from Dea Shubleka, Samela Balazi and Zeni Alia.

Opening 25.05.2024 h 17:00 at Reja (Tirana Pride)

Ongoing at [email protected]

Posta e dashurise: A Reservoir of Love is a program curated by Silvi Naçi with Aleanca LGBT. The storytelling delves into the personal journey of coming out with the self, context and family, starting from a childhood photograph, one of the young self - where the queerness leaps from the image. Silvi’s letter presents us with an invitation to look within, to look through time, revealing connections within ourselves, and making new ones with the queer Albanian diaspora.

Publication launch and open talk with the authors: Jonida Gashi, Ermir Hoxha, Raino Isto, YIber Marku and Jora Kasapi. The Albanian Handbook for Art and Education is a bilingual and open-source publication exploring the theme of art and education in Albania, starting by tracing a narrative that is still only partially accessible and complex to untangle. It was made in conjunction with Sounding Art Histories, a two part series of podcasts produced by Max Parnell. Developed with a research collective made up of professionals coming from different disciplines and working within or in relation to Albanian Art Institutions, the 'histories' presented here are envisioned as plural, in an effort to overcome the predominance of any single narrative or perspective, and to offer the ground from which a plethora of critical viewpoints can emerge.

Publication and Showcase of The Urgent (artist) Toolkit

The publication is presented in conjunction with The Urgent (artist) Atelier, a program that was conceived by starting from the question of 'urgencies' in art, as a way to learn from within our intimate journey to then join the personal to the political: how can your personal urgency, including your fragilities and doubts, support those of the collective that you are part of?

This project was made possible thanks to the support of ArtNexus, a 3-year international program led by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee (SAGC) and the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) partially implemented in Albania by Destil Creative Hub and curated by Bulevard Art and Media Institute.

For the second year in a row, Bulevard has commissioned five artists to make posters on the occasion of the 8th of March, International Women’s Day. The 2024 posters are by Orestia Kapidani (1978), Suela Muça (1973), Anxhela Pipero (1995), Alketa Ramaj (1983), and Abi Shehu (1993).

Produced by Bulevard and distributed free of charge at the 8th of March, the posters and overarching project bring artists’ work into the space of the protest. Developed through dialogue—particularly around how aesthetics are embedded in gender politics and everyday life—the 2024 artists were all directly recommended by the 2023 artists Bora Baboçi (1988), Lindart (1993–2010–ongoing), Matilda Odobashi (1988), Edit Pula (1974), and Gerta Xhaferaj (1993).

The posters are for sale at Bulevard Bookshop. Sales help to sustain an economy of independence.

This year marks the 16th anniversary of Kosovo’s Independence, and for the first time, Kosovo citizens experience traveling freely to the western part of the continent. To reflect on concepts of borders, freedom and identity processes, over the course of one year, the project will evolve through various stages, beginning with a performance exhibition taking place at Bulevard gallery space on the 15th of February 2024.

‘We honor only those who changed tonight’ unfolds at Bulevard as a first in a series of art moments curated by Rina Meta and activated by a newly created sound piece by Eljesa Beka. Her music and performance seeks to examine the independence week as an opportunity to look at this historical moment with freeing eyes, elevating it through an abundant offering of poetry, melodies, soundscapes, fragments of personal romance, borrowed music, noise, and harmonies from worlds unburdened with heroism.

KafeKokoshka 2024 is curated by franz_sella - who has invited “100 Capre” a never-ending film by Francesco Bertelé with a remote live performance by Gustafturmak and the 1981 fantasy film by Marcell Jankovics Fehérlófia or Son of the White Mare.

Poster artwork: byunknow

For the second year, An Independent Book Fair brings together publishers and bookmakers from Albania, Kosovo, and beyond through an international open call. As part of Lule Shqiponja, the fair is co-organized with 28 November.

* 28 November purveys texts (new, used, bootlegged) that relate to independence, anarchy, spaces of exception, desire, withdrawal, noncompliance, self-management, forms of identification, love.

2023 publishers

28 November, Aleph Klub, ArtHouse, Benedict Brink, Berk, Bulevard, Byunknow, CHwB Kosova, COMMENTARIVM, Kolektivi Zine, Kurdistan Solidarity Network, Literatura Anarkiste, Lirindja, Nepotik, Nisesos, O Göce, Oral History Kosovo, Palazzo Bronzo, Pararoja, Peizazhe të Fjalës, Pika pa Sipërfaqe, Potpuri, Private Print, Sherebel, Shtatëmbëdhjetë, StoryLab, Werkplaats Typografie, Yeah! Pizza!, Zachariah Riley, Zeta Contemporary Art Center

The Urgent (Artist) Atelier is a program dedicated to young artists. Bulevard is transformed into a communal studio space to question the intersection between art and education. The urgencies are developed through seminars, workshops, and public presentations, to unravel and share questions related to personal and collective work.

Artists: Anxhela Pipero, Aurela Kumanaku, Besa Mustafaj, Diona Kusari, Doris Vila, Egi Mali, Emi Behari, Enza Rripaj, Erald Nezaj, Erisalda Veizaj, Franklin Pelari, Hajrie Dedej, Iris Canaj, Kei Suçi, Klea Muceku, Pakita Rustemi, Redina Quse, Renid Tosuni, Resina Meçani, Samela Balazi, Tiziana Lohja

Guests: Mobile School of Visual Art, Arnisa Zeqo, Ukrainian Museum of Contemporary Art/Olga Balashove and Yuliia Hnat, Glen Caçi, Silvi Naçi, Fully Funded Residencies, Leah Whitman-Salkin, Academy of Others

The Bulevard Show 2023 presents the first performative intervention of Living Bridges, a project developed with Wurmkos, which intervenes in a threshold, a crack in the urban texture created by the demolition of a building designed by artist and architect Maks Velo (1935–2020). Living Bridges intervenes precisely in the space-time that exists between demolition and reconstruction.

Wurmkos is a group of artists founded in 1987 in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan). It was inspired by Franco Basaglia, the psychiatrist who, at the end of the 1970s, strived to close psychiatric hospitals in Italy.

Venue: In front of the demolished Maks Velo building (next to Bulevard/Destil)

Bulevard is pleased to present the second year of Diaries: a quest exploring collective artistic production in Albania, from the 1990s across the first decade of the 2000s, through the lens of Lindart, the first and only association of women artists in Albania. The first Diaries exhibition in 2022 was conceived as the beginning of a process, rather than an end result. Bulevard opens the second Diaries “entry” by combining an exhibition with a symposium. Both iterations interweave documentation and storytelling, where reimagined art historical narratives, engaged in artistic practice, friendship, and mutual support become visible across and within political and social borders.

An exhibition featuring: Lindart and the Albanian Women Artists Association: Eleni Laperi, Ikbal Beli, Merita Selimi, Suela Muça, Suzana Varvarica Kuka, Xheneta Kadillatri with Lala Meredith-Vula, Marina Grzinić, Tanja Ostojić, and Andreja Dugandžić, Lana Čmajčanin, and Silvi Naçi

A symposium with: Valentina Bonizzi, Andreja Dugandžić, Eleni Laperi, Ëremire Krasniqi, Ermir Hoxha, Danijela Dugandžić, Dimitra Gitska, Hana Halilaj, Jelena Petrović, Jonida Gashi, Lala Meredith-Vula, Lana Čmajčanin, Marina Gržinić, Raino Isto, Riet van der Linden, Tanja Ostojić, Silvi Naçi, Sokol Çunga.

For the second year, Lule Majt coincides with Pride and works in collaboration with Aleanca LGBT to focus with artists and poets in developing, expanding, promoting queer language and image making.

This year Lule Majit hosted the Cyanotype Lab by artist Silvi Naçi.

Feminism and LGBTQI+ struggles are nothing without representation—political, cultural, and aesthetic. This year, on March 8, International Women Day, five artists—Bora Baboçi, Lindart, Matilda Odobashi, Edit Pula, and Gerta Xhaferaj—have created posters for the protest.

Including political demands, everyday challenges, symbolic tensions, and much more, the posters mark a moment and space where the visual, the verbal, and the mundane come together in a collective movement.

The posters will be distributed free of charge at the march in Tirana on 8 March, at Mother Teresa Square.

Dedicated to the theme of independece of expression, love, and thought, Lule Kosova opened Bulevard’s library in construction. With a desire to establish increasing institutional relationships between Albania and Kosovo, Lule Kosova starts from the language shared by both.

For this year, in partnership with Kino Armata, the film Gratë e Lirisë by Lum Çitaku (2022) will be screened in Bulevard’s Pocket Cinema.

Kafe Kokoshka is a film program curated by artists, inspired by other artists who invite more artists! 

Curated by Laura Haby, the two-week program in Bulevard’s Pocket Cinema will screen 100 minutes of the following:

• Boat, David Lynch, 2007
• My Eyes are Gone, Laura Haby, 2017
• My Mexican Bretzel, Nuria Gimenéz, 2019

The Urgent (artist) Open Studio focuses on developing critical dialogue by offering space and mentorship to young artists in Albania. Starting from the possibility of thinking of a gallery space as an ‘open studio’, throughout the course of ten months a group of invited artists will develop, produce and test a new project, or a new dimension of an existing project or research.

By being in dialogue with mentors during the year the artists will open the studio space to the public that will participate in a co-designed public program.