The corridor is a mural project inside the Italian Ambassador's Residency in Tirana
Text by Genti Gjikola
THE PAINTED WALLS
'Granted there is a wall, what's going on behind it?'
Jean Tardieu
Of course, it is useless to count all the painted figures, make an inventory of them, and say
precisely whether these drawings are truthful or apocryphal, whether they belong to this
world or point to another. In this work, there is no clear path that follows rational coordinates;
it seems that the artist is far more interested in the rhythmic continuity and figurative
exploration of her artistic repertoire than in creating a classical scheme to be read linearly.
Setting boundaries for the interpretation of the work would be particularly harmful to its
poetics.
To me, Ledia is a visitor in the villa who one winter night left her bed and went out and
painted the narrow corridor because she couldn’t sleep. Thus, the passageway acquired
another identity, that of the Lascaux cave; I imagine visitors discovering the mysteries of the
gallery one by one on nights when there is no light, with lighted matches and torches in their
hands.
Over the virgin walls Ledia adds details from the city's intriguing history, child-like touches,
fragments of dreams, limbs of gentle animals and savage people, here and there Swiftian
scenes from Gulliver's Travels, geometric ephemera, and compact formulations with lines,
dots and migratory birds. Eyes that cry over eyes that wait for the tears and drip into a glass,
do not cause sadness but awaken reflections on sight itself, on the eye and the gaze. Those
people who fly towards the sky next to the pyramids and straight into the spirit of the clouds
are as mysterious as those who stand melancholy on the steps that open under their feet
and wait - with suitcases in hand - to discover either hell or heaven. There is a scene with
many false starts: for the contestants and the spectators, it says: AGAIN. The whole corridor
is an imaginary repertoire, a set complete with props that awaits us before entering the room
and hits us as we leave it.
Even when the scene – just before the end of the corridor - rises to a higher level of
seriousness and compactness where the totemic figure of the leader, of the idol, is easily
discernible by the visual idiom of the figure standing atop the pedestal, Ledia's style is just
as elaborate and compressed as when she paints, for example, a toe, a road sign, a torso….
Even in this apparently classical composition, we are in harmony with every preceding
tableau and with the prior stylistics of description. The Apotheosis (a most fitting word for this
scene) is found under the visual petal of descriptive simplicity, worked out in detail with
finesse and refinement. This scene – so pertinent in the current times – adds to the tension
between observation, mystery and history.
If someone is not convinced by such a portrayal, I will quote - not without purpose - from J.L.
Borges's famous essay on the One Thousand and One Nights (imagined scenes from which
we find referenced on the walls of the corridor even by Kostandini): "… the radical distinction
between poetry and prose lies in the very different expectations of readers: poetry
presupposes an intensity that is not tolerated in prose." And Ledia's prose is quite poetic in
its visual and gestural intensity. She knows how to convey joys, pressures, touches of
melancholy and dreams as convincingly and intricately crafted as Scheherazade’s tales.
That Ledia Kostandini and her art have successfully conquered a complex linear and hybrid
space, with a veil of figurative simplicity and deep metaphorical resonance, is entirely to her
credit.
Genti Gjikola
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