Enver Hoxha – afterart

Two Museum-Cities in Pictures: “Gjirokastra: Qytet-Muze” [1978] and “Berati: Qytet-Muze” [1987]

Today’s post presents two photobooks devoted to the two settlements designated by the Albanian government “musem-cities” [qytet-muze] under socialism. (Both became UNESCO sites after socialism’s end.)

The former, with a text by Emin Riza and photographs by Refik Veseli, is devoted to the southern Albanian city of Gjirokastra, the birthplace of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Gjirokastra: Qytet-Muze includes a wealth of images of the ancient and Ottoman-era cultural heritage in the city, as well as an impressive documentation of socialist-era buildings and monuments. (Interestingly, Hektor Dule’s monument to the battles of Skënderbeu–already seemingly out of place in the southern city–is omitted.) There are also images of the interiors of the major museums created in Gjirokastra during socialism, which are invaluable for understanding Albanian socialist-era exhibition design.

A group of students visiting the Gjirokastra county museum of the National Liberation War view a painting of Bule Naipi dhe Persefoni Kokëdhima, two young women who were members of the antifascist youth resistance and who were executed by Nazi occupation forces in the center of Gjirokastra in 1944

The second book, published almost a decade later, with a text by Gazi Strazimiri and photographs by Refik Veseli, focuses on the southern Albanian city of Berat, located between Mount Tomorr and Mount Shpirag (the latter the site of Armando Lulaj’s NEVER, of 2012). Berati: Qytet-Muze likewise focuses on the ancient and Ottoman-era structures in the city, as well as modern urban restructuring and industrial architecture (such as the massive ‘Mao Zedong’ Textile Factory, which of course–by 1978–was no longer identified with Mao). There are also interesting images of socialist-era monuments, although there are relatively few of these in comparison to Gjirokastra.

Of particular interest is a panoramic view of the city of Berat that features the massive ENVER geoglyph in the background, across the slopes of Mt. Shpirag. Upon closer examination, however, the letters have been inscribed not on the mountain itself, but on the photograph: little attempt has even been made to make the letters correspond to the visual rules of perspectival recession into space. They appear to hover over the landscape, perhaps unintentionally positing the flatness of the photograph itself as the surface of history, rather than the immensity of the landscape indexed by the image. The image, therefore, clearly represents the alteration of a photograph made before the creation of the ENVER geoglyph in 1968, a studious updating of the landscape to match its more current visual actuality. Alterations of photographs—whether to contribute to the rewriting of history or to increase the legibility of the history supposedly depicted by them (or both)—were not uncommon in socialist culture, and Albania was no exception to this. This particular textual supplement to the panorama of Berat must have been particularly significant in 1987, just two years after Enver Hoxha—Albania’s socialist leader and eventually dictator from 1944 through 1985—died. Regardless of precisely when the photograph was originally altered, the inscription on Shpirag’s slopes represents an attempt to assert Hoxha’s longevity not only forward into the future (as the permanence of the geoglyph was not doubt meant to) but also backwards in time, as if it was somehow part of an eternal view of the city of Berat and the mountain. Of course, the details of this retroactive eternity were loose: close consideration of the photograph in comparison to later images reveals that the letters do not even appear on the correct slopes, but have been shifted to the left. This inexactness, however, has its own logic—its imprecision is the imprecision of myth, rather than the precision of documentation. This altered photograph provides a fascinating piece in the history to which Armando Lulaj’s subsequent re-writing of the geoglyph in NEVER (2012) belongs: a history of reinscribing the geoglyph across various historical surfaces: photographs as well as the mountain itself.[i]

A panorama of Berat with the ENVER geoglyph later added to the photograph.

[i] On this topic, see Chapter 4 of my forthcoming dissertation, Monumental Endeavors: Sculpting History in Southeastern Europe, 1960-2016, which focuses on postsocialist negations and temporal extensions of monuments in Albania and the former Yugoslavia.

Mësimet Konsekuente Revolucionare: Nëntori 9, 1977

This is the twelfth in a series of posts containing PDFs of texts that may be of interest to those studying Albanian socialist realism. More posts with critical content are in the works, but for the time being I’m too busy to do anything except scan more documents…

Today’s post contains selections from the September 1977 issue of Nëntori. The first selection is Dalan Shapllo’s fascinating “Mësimet Konsekuente Revolucionare të Partisë dhe të Shokut Enver: Mbi Letërsinë dhe Artin,” a review and ‘study guide’ for Mbi Letërsinë dhe Artin, a collection of Hoxha’s writings and speeches on the subject of literature and the fine arts, produced between 1944 and 1976. (The full text of that book is available here.) Shapllo concludes his review of the collection by drawing the reader’s attention to two sections of the book in which Hoxha made concrete statements and suggestions regarding the realization of works of art. The first is, of course, the well-known letter written (in 1969) by Hoxha to the trio of monumental sculptors Kristaq Rama, Shaban Hadëri, and Muntaz Dhrami in connection with the realization of the Independence Monument in Vlora. The second is the 1962 statement made by Hoxha to the Shkodran creators of the drama Plaku i maleve [Old Man of the Mountains], devoted to Bajram Curri. Shapllo points out that in both cases, one of the key ideas expressed by Hoxha was that the ‘great figures’ of Albanian history (Ismail Qemali and Bajram Curri, respectively) should be depicted as acting in close concert with the masses. Shapllo notes that Hoxha’s aesthetic interventions can be summarized as expressing the following two key principles: “1) Historical works [of art] must be characterized by revolutionary ideas, thus preserving their historical truth; and 2) the relationship of the masses and of the hero must be conceived as a dialectical and materialist one, in order to show that the masses create history and heroes can emerge from the masses and play a positive role only when they embody and reflect the interests of the people” (19). As formulaic and ambiguous as these principles might be, one can’t help but think that they might prove instructive for current politicians and artists in Albania.

Also of interest is the second part (I regret that I don’t have the previous issue of Nëntori, so I can’t offer you the first half) of an essay by aesthetician Alfred Uçi entitled “Arkitektura dhe Estetika.” Uçi, the author of the monumental Labirintet e Modernizmit, was one of the most prolific and distinguished aestheticians of socialist Albania, and his analysis of the relationship between architecture and the other arts—including the factors that distinguish socialist architecture from Modernist formalism—is enlightening for anyone interested in considering the precise character of the relationship between representational art and abstract arrangements of space and form in socialist Albanian culture.

Finally, the issue contains several great prints and drawings highlighting the activity of the Albanian youth in aksion in agricultural development.

Happy reading!

Në Dritën e Partisë…

This is the seventh in a series of posts containing PDFs of texts that may be of interest to those studying Albanian socialist realism. Initially I had planned to write thorough descriptions and analyses of the content of the documents, but I barely have the time to scan them, much less write extensive commentaries.

Today’s text is the complete volume Letërsia dhe Artet në Dritën e Partisë (1975), by Razi Brahimi, one of the principle literary critics during the time of socialism. The work won the first prize in the literary-artistic competition devoted to the 30th anniversary of Liberation. For historical purposes, the timing of Brahimi’s sweeping analysis of socialist culture in Albania is interesting because it appears relatively soon after the (in)famous 4th Plenum of the Central Committee, in 1973—an event which is traditionally understood to represent the end of a period of relatively liberal ideas on culture and politics, marking the beginning of a shift towards a decidedly stricter dichotomy between Albanian socialism and “foreign influences.” (Hoxha’s oft-quoted speech on the occasion was entitled “Të Thellojmë Luftën Ideologjike Kundër Shfaqjeve të Huaja dhe Qëndrimeve Liberale Ndaj Tyre” [“To Deepen the Ideological Struggle Against Foreign Influences and Liberal Attitudes Towards Them”]. One way to read Brahimi’s book, which concludes with a bibliography mapping Hoxha and Ramiz Alia’s relevant works on culture up till that time, is as a kind of guidebook for post-4th-Plenum aesthetic criticism. As such, its overarching summary of the role arts and letters have and should play in the context of socialist Albania is decidedly valuable for historians.

Happy reading!

‘Dëshmi e asaj që ishte por që s’mund e s’duhet të jetë’: Bunk’Art, History as Touristic Itinerary, and the Infantilization of Collective Memory on the 70th Anniversary of Liberation: A Placeholder

I call this a placeholder in the sense that it represents a set of very preliminary ideas about a topic that I think no one can effectively respond to only a day after it happened. Still, all analyses have to begin somewhere, at some point. Call it a rant, but one that is intended to spur conversation—and to further my own thoughts about the issue—and by no means to exhaust the rather vast number of things that could be said about Bunk’Art. As always, insights are welcome.

Yesterday, so the official story goes, Albania took another step on a long and painful road of transition, out of the obscure darkness of its communist past and into the light of transparent democracy. A vast underground bunker constructed in 1978[1]—during the country’s socialist period—to house the leaders of state in the event of an atomic attack by the Soviet Union or America has been transformed into museum and artistic installation space that will be open to the public until December 30. The installation opened yesterday, with a ceremony that included speeches by Minister of Defense Mimi Kodheli and Prime Minister Edi Rama. The American ambassador Arvizu and German ambassador Hoffman were present, among other dignitaries.[2] Today some 2,000 visitors (including, as the Albanian media and the Bunk’Art website excitedly proclaim, numerous foreign tourists) made the trip to Tirana’s periphery (in a special, free bus leaving from alongside the National History Museum) to visit the site. The event (again, as enthusiastically reported by the Albanian media) has already begun to receive attention in the foreign media.

Perhaps the most salient image from the opening event was of Rama delivering his speech, standing on a stage littered with four concrete domes that recall the thousands of concrete bunkers that inhabited (and in some places still inhabit) even the remotest reaches of Albania’s communist landscape. These concrete domes were colorfully decorated with painted images recalling children’s drawings—floating flowers, puffy clouds, and simple boxlike houses with picket fences.[3] On a backdrop behind Rama loomed the logo for the installation, a semicircle fractured into irregular planes of pure, bright color, with a red door at its center topped by the red star of communism. Below this logo, the name of the exhibition, BUNK’ART, was accompanied by the phrase “70 vjet pas çlirimit” [70 years after liberation], a reference to the liberation of the country from fascist occupation. If the connection between the country’s more than 40 years of socialist history and a stage with several concrete bunker-forms covered in childish imagery was not immediately apparent, I can only assume that this was part and parcel of the confusing and confused spectacle orchestrated at the opening (and, it seems, endemic to the installation as a whole). There are certainly any number of insightful analyses to be made of Bunk’Art, and the present discussion is meant to focus on only a few: the diagnosis and treatment of past traumas through the model of the touristic itinerary and the infantilization of the notion of collective memory in the process of navigating this itinerary.

Insofar as I find it difficult to find a spot to begin an analysis of Bunk’Art, even having set the above limits upon my investigation, I would like begin rather arbitrarily with a curious translation. During his speech, Edi Rama made the (tremendously fraught) statement, “Sot, ne jemi dëshmitarë se kemi çelur derën e një thesari të kujtesës sonë kolektive.” [My translation—certainly a bit awkward: ‘Today, we are witnesses to the opening of the door to a treasure of our collective memory.’] When the BBC reported on the event, Rama’s speech was glossed with this quotation: “We have opened today a thesaurus of the collective memory that presents thousands of pieces of the sad events and life under communism.” Now, the term ‘thesaurus’ does literally mean ‘treasure’, so that the translation of the word ‘thesar’ (Albanian for ‘treasure’) is understandable, if awkward and not, I think, true to Rama’s intention. Nonetheless, this confusion—emblematic of the whole confusing scenario of the opening and the installation in general—is a productive one, since it invites us to consider Rama’s quotation more closely. For what could be more appropriate than the image of past not as treasure but as a treasure-house of words, of concepts, and what more fitting counterpart to the confusion of the installation’s concept than he image of flipping through a thesaurus, looking for the right words, getting lost in a sea of synonyms and losing any straight line of thought.

The most cynical response to Rama’s statement—and the obvious one—is to pass it off as evidence an undisguised and callous greed: Bunk’Art, already a hit with Albanians and especially with foreign tourists, if we can believe the media, is a ‘treasure’ in the most banal sense of the word: a source of actual and symbolic/cultural capital on the world stage.[4] Cynical though it may be to take this reading, it is also, I think, very much what Rama is getting at. In his speech, he asserts, “Këto mjedise janë trashëgimi e një kulture të jetuari që, ju siguroj, do të tërheqin shumë herë më tepër turistë sesa ç‘mund të tërheqë ajo Shqiponja e tmerrshme që kanë vendosur tek rrethrrotullimi i doganës.” [‘These premises are the inheritance of a cultural way of living that, I assure you, will draw a good deal more tourists than that awful eagle at the traffic circle at Dogana [imports].’] On Twitter, the day of the opening, Rama declared “Bota e nendheshme e diktatures do kthehet ne nje haperise atraksioni historik, kulturor e turistik pa asnje dyshim” [‘The underground world of the dictatorship will, undoubtedly, turn into a historic, cultural, and touristic attraction.’] Thus, the language used by Rama (who has, in the media, already become the de facto curator and author of the exhibit, despite the fact that the idea has numerous sources and has been under discussion in a number of circles for some time) describe the opening is that of history-as-touristic-attraction. This is the ‘treasure’ of the bunker and the collective memory it supposedly embodies.

I am being more than a little unfair, for I am attributing to Rama’s rhetoric a confusion it may not really contain, that between history and memory.[5] However, it is undeniable that the two intermingle in Rama’s speech, sometimes emerging as interchangeable and other times as separate. The question of collective memory will concern me below; what I wish to examine first is the idea of traversing history (one’s own history, or another’s) as a touristic endeavor—for that is precisely how Rama characterizes Bunk’Art. “Është vetëm fillimi sepse ne kemi një projekt për të krijuar një intenerar historik dhe turistik të nëndheut komunist dhe njëkohësisht për ta kthyer këtë intenerar, në një intenerar të imagjinatës krijuese, duke synuar nga njëra anë çlirimin dhe nga ana tjetër pjellorinë e kujtesës sonë kolektive.” [This is just a beginning because we have a project to create a historical and touristic itinerary of the communist underground and at the same time to turn that itinerary into an itinerary of the creative imagination, with the goal of both liberating and harnessing the fecundity of our collective memory.’] The project of coming to terms with the past is the project of establishing a touristic itinerary—what could be more profoundly and problematically Modern than this project? Were not many of the exemplary Modernist projects (we need only think of the relationship between the colonial, the primitive, and the past in so much Modernist cultural production) precisely the projects of ‘tourism of the creative imagination’? Now, Rama emerges as the quintessential Modernist-as-statesman, a role he has long courted (though I think he has never been forthright about its modernity—for it is, I think, in no way ‘post’-modern).[6]

The Modern touristic itinerary is certainly open to a number of different ‘tourists’—from foreigners, to Albanians living (or born) outside of Albania, to those who live within in the country, and who may or may not remember the Hoxha years—but what is unavoidable in this model is the transformation of history—lived or otherwise—into capital fueling the global tourist industry. Tourism has been an important aspect of Rama’s time in office—his policies have often been focused on Albania’s coastal regions, but here the language of touristic development falls squarely in line with a project to mine the imaginary of a people (here conceived as having such a unified imaginary, or ‘unconscious,’ if you prefer). As he puts it, the hope behind Bunk’Art is ‘to create new spaces: new spaces of the imaination, of thinking, of living together, through the power of art.’ [“…për të krijuar hapësira të reja [:] Hapësira të reja të të imagjinuarit, të të menduarit, të të bashkëjetuarit përmes fuqisë së artit.”] This is certanly a worthy goal, and one in keeping with Rama’s prior projects, at least at the level of its rhetoric—what is new is the idea that the primary way to orchestrate this encounter is through the vague distance and ignorant enthusiasm of the tourist: not just the tourist of someone else’s past (that is an easy enough position, I can tell you, as someone who has often been a tourist in Albania), but as the tourist of one’s own past.

It is not only the transformation of the encounter with (communist) history into a touristic itinerary that is key to Rama’s project—it is also held together (insofar as it holds together) by a psychoanalytic model of collective memory, as I have already mentioned. Thus, traversing the itinerary of history is more than a simple hermeneutic exercise; it is self-diagnosis, self-diagnosis of the collective of its own imaginary, through the consumption of the past-as-commodity (in this case, the communist past as commodity). The ideal consumers for this commodity, however, are not so much adults—in Rama’s rhetoric—as children. Here (what I can only imagine to be) the logic of bunkers decorated with childlike drawings becomes clear. Rama makes it very clear in his speech that Bunk’Art is, in an important way, ‘for the children’—for those who cannot remember the time of communism, who cannot understand what the isolation of communism was like.[7] Thus, in a way, Bunk’Art as an itinerary is not only about the Modernist project of tourism—it is also about the Modernist ideal of a return to youth, to innocence, to ignorance of the past that only adults can know. And yet here we come to the impasse: if Bunk’Art is about coming to terms with history, how can it also be for those who did not live that history, who do not remember it, unless the goal of its diagnosis is to make its tourists children, so that they may both forget and be taught again how to remember?[8] In other words, collective memory will be most effective when it returns to the imagined zero-point of childhood, among the flowers and puffy clouds and box-houses, and then consumes history as touristic itinerary.[9] From this perspective, what seems ‘infantile’ about Bunk’Art—the fanfare, the bright colors, the bright lights, the confusion, the desire to do everything all at once—must be considered quite intentionally so: part of its explicit goal it to infantilize the collective memory of the Albanian people.[10]

Having been at pains to find a place to begin, I am also at a loss as to how to end, so I will simply say that this analysis—provisional, as I have said before, all too desperately retreating from saying anything really controversial—is meant as one attempt to think critically about Rama’s project and the real and symbolic appropriation of the communist past in Albania. One hopes that other, more thoughtful and thorough, analyses are already being written. [Thanks to certain acquaintances more well-read and attentive to the discussion of this issue than I am, I would like to draw attention to two thoughtful analyses of the issue: here at Postbllok and here at Peizazhe të fjalës.]

I intend to return to these thoughts in the coming week(s), but for now they stand as they are—a call to think critically about Bunk’Art and what it means to treat the past as tourism, to infantilize memory.

[1] The tunnels were begun earlier, in 1972.

[2] Several news clips show Rama guiding Arvizu through the various rooms of the bunker, explaining them (in English to Arvizu).

[3] One can only assume that some pun on communist dictator Enver Hoxha’s assertion that Albania was a “fushë me lule” [field of flowers] was intended.

[4] This is not the place to enter into a deep discussion of the way the communist past has been and is being appropriated as cultural capital in Albania. Suffice it to say that—unsurprisingly—this practice is very much ubiquitous at the moment. There are others more qualified to comment on this at length and in detail than I am.

[5] This too is a debate that I prefer not to enter into here—so I will instead merely gesture at its existence and go blithely about my way.

[6] Most recently, at Creative Time, Rama trotted out his now rather repetitive tale of his time as mayor of Tirana and his artistic projects there. One (read: I) feels an almost painful nostalgia for those days, looking at the image of him standing before flowery bunker-forms.

[7] “…që s’e kanë jetuar atë kohë. Nuk mund ta imagjinojnë, edhe duke ua treguar me fjalë, sesi Shqipëria e vogël mund të ishte një botë e tretë e izoluar nga dy botët e tjera, nga Perëndimi dhe nga Lindja, që luftonte, në mënyrë imagjinare, me imperializmin amerikan dhe me social-imperializmin sovjetik.”

[8] Apologies are no doubt in order for the truly egregious use of italics.

[9] I am reminded of a quote often attributed to the author Henry Miller: “The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.”

[10] In case it is not clear, I am quite suspicious of all claims of collective memory, and I am not claiming that Rama’s project ‘distorts’ some ‘true’ collective memory—rather, it is one way of most assuredly creating it. the problem is that this is not how it is being discussed.

Shadows of Hands, or, The Dictator Born From the Sign: Brief Comments on the Representation of Enver Hoxha’s Body in Spiro Kristo’s Shoku Enver Hoxha Gjatë Luftës Nacionalçlirimtare

As part of a recent project, “Talking Back to Dictators: Reading Art and Culture In, Through, and Against the Writings of the Great Leaders,” I’ve been spending more time thinking about representations of dictatorial bodies—and particularly the body of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s communist dictator. This observation grew out of this research. As always, thoughts are welcome!

In this brief essay, I would like to nuance a commonly made observation about the representation of Enver Hoxha in paintings produced during his regime, namely: that he does not cast a shadow. This observation, on the whole, is quite accurate, and my purpose is not to dismiss it, nor to suggest that it does not raise a plethora of important questions about the material and metaphysical status of the body of the dictator. However—like all good observations—it is not absolutely true, and I think we may learn just as much by looking at these cases in which it is not true. In particular, I want to consider the significance of the shadow cast by Hoxha’s hand in Spiro Kristo’s Shoku Enver Hoxha Gjatë Luftës Nacionalçlirimtare [Comrade Enver Hoxha During the National Liberation War], of 1974 (originally in the Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; I am unaware of its current location).

Before I discuss Kristo’s painting, however, I want to begin by considering how the phenomenon of Hoxha’s immateriality manifests itself in Albanian socialist realist painting. Let us a classic image of Hoxha: Zef Shoshi’s official portrait, which was frequently reproduced in official publications, especially in the editions of Hoxha’s writings. In Shoshi’s image, Hoxha sits at his desk, dressed in his familiar grey suit and red tie. Hoxha’s upper body forms a stable pyramid, his hands resting gently—weightlessly—on the surface of his desk, which holds a number of carefully placed and clearly delineated administrative accessories. We come upon Hoxha as he is about to write: his right hand holds a pen to a blank sheet of white paper laid out before him on the desk. He appears either deep in thought or else suddenly distracted: his gaze looks out of the image to our right, missing us. The moment is uncertain: is he composing the first word of a letter, an official memorandum, an entry in his diary, mapping out the text in his mind before he begins to write? Or has he been distracted by some stray thought, some sound, perhaps even by the entrance of someone who has come in behind us to bring news to the Dictator of the Proletariat. In either case, Hoxha’s poise is exemplary: his face betrays neither the strain of thought nor surprise. His eyes are open and attentive, their darkness in contrast to the muted grays of his suit, hair and the wall behind him drawing us to ponder the purpose behind his look. On the desk before him, his left hand gently holds the upper left corner of the page in place, while his right hand rests just as gently upon the paper, holding a pen close to the surface of the center of the sheet.

In no small part, the perceived weightlessness of Hoxha’s figure comes from the fact that he casts no shadow. True, the light that bathes the room comes from no definable source (though it illuminates the right side of the dictator’s face more than the left), but nonetheless there is no trace of a shadow cast on the wall behind Hoxha, either by his body or his chair. Furthermore, at the point where Hoxha’s hand meets the paper, pen gripped firmly and purposefully, there is only the vaguest hint of a darkening in the white surface of the paper. Even at the very edges of Hoxha’s right hand, Shoshi’s soft and meticulous shading gives virtually no hint that the dictator’s hand exists as a material form obeying the laws of illumination. That Hoxha casts no shadow places him in a world apart from us, either more or less real than ours (or both at the same time).[1]

This is, undoubtedly, the standard for images of Hoxha produced during his regime: a brief survey of portraits and history paintings by Vilson Kilica, Sali Shijaku, Shaban Hysa, Kujtim Buza, and others will confirm that Hoxha never casts a shadow. Or doesn’t he? The first thing to be said, an issue I think is extremely important but which I do not wish to dwell upon here, is that figures in socialist realist paintings more often than not do not cast shadows in general.[2] Thus, Hoxha is part of a general rule. However, it is more fruitful to consider the counterexamples that prove this rule, one of which is Spiro Kristo’s Shoku Enver Hoxha Gjatë Luftës Nacionalçlirimtare (1974). Here, we see Hoxha as a young commander,[3] presumably in the headquarters of the resistance: he stands at left, a map at his back and a table before him, where his left hand rests on yet another map. A rifle and binoculars hang on the grey wall to his left, and documents, a lamp, an ashtray, and notebooks clutter the surface of the table. The lighting here is once again quite vague, but the source clearly comes from the upper right side of the canvas, high over both our and Hoxha’s heads (not at all from the lamp at the desk). The map on the table disappears out of the frame at lower right, while its bottom edge is folded over the edge of the table against which Hoxha stands. A magnifying glass rests on the map, and black and red arrows mark the movements of the occupiers and the resistance. Hoxha holds a red pencil in his right hand, lax, while his left is firmly planted on the map, at a swirling cluster of arrows (presumably near Tirana). And there is the shadow.

It is slight, let us make no mistake, but also distinct: here, at the tips of Hoxha’s fingers, Kristo has used the deepest black found in the image, present in only a few other places (the black arrows on the map, a few folds of Hoxha’s shirt, the shadows in his hair…). The shadow is quite necessary aesthetically, for it differentiates the flesh of Hoxha’s hand from the colors on the relief map. At the same time, it accentuates the tips of his fingers, which end the dynamic diagonal downward movement of his straightened left arm; the fingers are pressed so firmly against the map that their joints bend inversely, the index finger concavely and the knuckle of the middle and ring fingers convexly. Even the tip of his thumb, pressed to the map, casts a small but distinct dark shadow. If the hand, and its shadow, are necessary to link Hoxha’s monumental body to the map itself, this is also the case because his gaze (in some ways, similar to Shoshi’s portrait) is not focused on the surface before him, but gazes off the right side of the canvas, looking at something we cannot see. As above, Hoxha seems to pause suddenly in the midst of an action, caught up in thought, looking at nothing. Here, however, his body is anchored to the map, and it takes on a material aspect through its connection to the map, where it casts a shadow.

Why the map? I want to argue that Kristo’s emphasis of Hoxha’s hand as a material object touching the map is not accidental. What Kristo depicts is the becoming-material of Hoxha’s body in the presence of the representation of Albania. If we place the image alongside a host of paintings in which Hoxha’s feet, planted firmly upon the soil of the fatherland, cast no shadow, the significance will become clearer. The dictator does not become material when his feet touch the earth, he becomes material out of that most simulacral of simulacra: the map of the territory that does not yet exist (the future socialist ‘utopia’ of Albania). In this case, we might say that it is the map that precedes the dictator: out of the swirling represented motion of troops on the map, out of the flat surface made to mimic dimension, Hoxha emerges as something tangible. He is not simply historicized (his role in the war made the key element of the so-called National Liberation War [WWII]); his ‘reality’ (in the haptic sense) is a function not of the nation itself (whatever that might mean), but of the sign for the territory of the nation. is existence becomes material not at the level of interaction with everyday objects so much as at the level of meta-representations of the world. Kristo’s painting, and his depiction of the dictator’s hand with its shadow, gives us a glimpse of Hoxha taking material form in the higher realm of maps, the realm of surfaces and images that precedes our own.

Is it any wonder that amongst us, before us, at his desk about to write, he casts no shadow?

[1] For one discussion of the metaphysical significance of Hoxha’s body and the realm of appearances, see Gëzim Qëndro, Le surréalisme socialiste: L’autopsie de l’utopie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013).

[2] Stylistically, this is no doubt in part due to the tremendous debt owed to Impressionism, where intense light and dark give way to light as pure colors. This cannot of course fully explain the ideological significance of a world without shadows.

[3] This is also, I think, important: we see Hoxha here before his apotheosis: he is nothing superhuman, or beyond human, quite yet. Of course many images depictng Hoxha in the war years show him without a shadow. Some however, like this one and Guri Madhi’s Formimi i Shtabit të Përgjithshëm, portray parts of his body casting a shadow.