Joanna Mytkowska – författare

This catalog accompanies Edi Hila: Painter of Transformation, the first retrospective exhibition devoted to the Albanian painter Edi Hila, considered one of the last masters from Eastern Europe. Through Hila’s eyes, the Eastern European experience is stripped of accident or adventure and instead gives weight to distilled general truths.The catalog traces key moments from his formative artistic experience, including a firsthand account of his infamous 1972 painting, Planting of Trees, which because of its unusual use of color and form that ran contrary to approved socialist realist doctrine, led to his being forced to labor in a poultry processing plant. In the evenings, however, he secretly created a series of drawings documenting the life of the workers, which became the Poultry series, harrowing in its raw realism. The publication continues to track Hila’s practice through the 1990s, when we find the artist carefully observing life after the fall of Enver Hoxha’s regime and his attempts at depicting the realities of the Albanian transformation on the precipice of the new millennium, before concluding with a review of Hila’s contemporaneous practice, which discloses more the limitations and traps of transformation than its promises. Richly illustrated with reproductions of Hila’s work in full color, many of them never before published, this is a groundbreaking catalog, one that will help establish Hila’s international reputation as a master painter of the region and Europe at large.

A timely reflection on the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw’s collection.The opening of a new museum building offers a unique moment for reflection and reinvention. This book explores the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw’s collection as a lens through which to critically examine the very institutions of the art museum, collecting practices, and artistic canon in the present day. Leading voices in contemporary art and museum studies contribute a range of perspectives on crucial questions: How do museums navigate their historical and political contexts? How can they better engage and represent diverse communities? What does it mean to decolonize a museum collection? Through insightful analysis and case studies, this volume charts a path for museums to embrace their evolving role in an increasingly complex world.