Adrian Paci: Lost Communities.

Adrian Paci emigrated from Albania to Italy with his family in the late 1990s, escaping the political unrest of the Albanian uprising. The very personal experiences of flight, of giving up shared communities and having to search for a new identity, have left their mark on his artistic work. Over the past twenty years, those themes have found expression in the form of videos, photos, paintings, and sculptures that interpret these existential experiences. This book presents reproductions of a range of the iconic works that have earned Paci a global reputation, many of which center on themes of uncertainty. In one of his most well-known video works, Centro di permanenza temporanea (2007), a group of refugees wait on a set of stairs on an airplane tarmac—yet no airplane arrives. In the sculpture Home to Go (2001), a man carries the roof of a house on his shoulders. These stunning works and the accompanying essays take up the topical political subjects underlying Paci’s art and examine his oeuvre from various angles, while an interview with Paci and some of his personal poems round out the volume.

Florian Steininger is an Austrian art historian and artistic director of the Kunsthalle Krems, Austria.

Andreas Hoffer is curator at the the Kunsthalle Krems, Austria.