Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, 2007

The Albanian artist Adrian Paci works in various media (video, installation, painting, and sculpture) and with a thematic focus on sociopolitical content. His works comprise reflections on the existential moments of human existence and condense the consequences of conflict and social upheaval. Paci is an artist who has taken up the cluster of issues connected with migration, globalization, and cultural identity, impressively articulating his experience of these in images.
Paci’s photograph Centro di Permanenza Temporanea formed part of the eponymous video work created in 2007. It shows a series of dark-skinned and Hispanic people on a gangway apparently leading to nowhere. The viewer never learns whether this group is to be deported or whether it is about to embark on a journey to some other, unspecified destination. And yet this human phalanx, which probably no airplane will ever collect, is the epitome of disappointed hope. One may detect irony or even self-irony running through this work, but perhaps it is also the expression of a historical awareness of the mutability of states and identities. (AE)