Albania, Adrian Paci admitted in a 2001 interview, was more the context of his work than its actual subject. At the time, the artist, who was born in Shkodra in 1969, had already been living in Italy with his family for four years. And yet Paci is one of the artists who reliably addresses the complex issues of migration, globalization and cultural identity and gives us an impressive picture of them.
For his video "Centro di Permanenza temporanea" in 2007, he filmed a number of dark-skinned and Hispanic people on a gangway that leads to nowhere. The viewer does not find out whether this group is to be deported or whether they are heading for a better place. And yet this phalanx of people, who will probably never catch a plane, is the epitome of dashed hopes. For "Turn On", Paci filmed a number of Albanian unemployed people who held a light bulb powered by a generator for an entire day. Regardless of whether Paci expresses himself in the media of video, installation, painting or sculpture, his works exhibit breaks. One could call this irony or even self-irony, but perhaps it is also a historical awareness of the changeability of states and identities.