Edi Hila, Fractured Horizons
Moderna Museet Malmö presents Edi Hila's first major solo exhibition in Scandinavia, highlighting the depth and relevance of one of the most significant artists in Southern Europe. Since the early 1990s, following the fall of Albania's communist regime, Hila has depicted the country's profound social and architectural transformations, developing what he calls "paradoxical realism." His paintings transform fragments of everyday life into poetic, timeless images where soft colors contrast with the weight of history.
The exhibition traces Albania's passage from isolation to a new, uncertain reality: cities in transition, monumental public buildings bearing the imprint of past ideologies, and migrant vessels advancing toward an unreachable horizon. In his more recent works, Hila looks beyond Albania's borders; tents emerge as recurring motifs-symbols of shelter, freedom, precariousness, and the search for a future elsewhere.
Born in 1944 in Shkodër and based in Tirana, Edi Hila gained international recognition with Albania's first national pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennale and has since been exhibited widely across Europe, including at documenta 14. Curated by Joa Ljungberg and Corinne Diserens, the Malmö exhibition is accompanied by a multilingual catalogue featuring essays, interviews, and archival material spanning over fifty years of Hila's practice.
