Alban Muja

Alban Muja, visual artist and filmmaker, was born in 1980, in Kosovo’s Mitrovica. He finished his studies at the Prishtina Academy of Fine Arts, and has been active in the Kosovo art scene since the beginning of the Millenium. He nominated the Henkel Art.Award in 2008. Presently living in Pristhina. Placing people with unusual names in the center of attention is a recurrent feature of Alban MUJA’s work. The series My Name Their City present seven Kosovan Albanian people, each positioned similarly, in a neutral white space with a cityscape in their hands. Each person’s name is identical with the name of the Albanian city the picture of which they hold. “The influence of nationalist identity politics of the Albanians in Kosovo has resulted in the particular phenomenon of naming children after Albania’s towns, mostly during the 70s and 80s. This is linked to a dream of unifying all Albanian territories around the border of modern-day Albania in a greater ethnic Albania, an idea originating from the early 19th century and culminating with the independence of Kosovo in the first decade of the 21st century. Another factor was that Kosovar Albanians were not allowed to travel to what they considered the Motherland of their common ethnicity, which only helped foster stronger feelings of nostalgia about the neighbouring Albania.” (Muja)

K. B.