Ledia Kostandini

Ledia Kostandini

 

The first impression that I got of Ledia Kostandini’s work was that it is fun.
Consisting of bright colors (lots of pink!), funny interventions into the
landscape and innovative uses of space, her art is a joy to look at and engage
with. And engagement is precisely what the artist is after. She does not merely
alter or add to the surrounding space, but she connects with its users,
involving them in the process of creating her art. In a sense, it aims not only
to be participatory, but also didactic. For example, one project involved
planting a series of cut-out figures into peoples’ gardens or yards in the
rural countryside. The cut-outs looked like the backs of peoples’ legs and butts, bent over, the way a human body would appear to stick out of the landscape and pop up over the horizon if one were working in
the garden. In order to create this work, she had to ask the owners of the
gardens if she could plant her butts there. To do that, in many cases she had
to explain not only what her project was, but what art was. One person, she
reported, even asked her: “what’s an artist?” Ledia’s colorful butts not only
made a comical addition to the landscape of rural Albania, but also brought art
to its people, quite literally, not only by showing them, but explaining it to
them. This would be a difficult task in most rural areas anywhere, given that what most
people understand to be art involves studio painting or sculpture. So Ledia not
only had to explain what art is, but what contemporary, participatory and installation
art involves as well.

 

The wires of Tirana

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If you walk around
Tirana long enough you will come across another kind of installation art:
masses, piles and conglomerations of electrical wires strewn across city
streets, sidewalks, walls and telephone poles. To some they may seem normal, to
me they seemed scary (at least at first, not being used to such things), but to
Ledia, they seemed like an opportunity. The artist is aware of the transitory
nature of things that surround her, and the random elements of the everyday world.
So she seeks to transform them into something else – from a plain cement block
to a domino, from a sidewalk brick to an airmail envelope, from an uncovered
switch breaker to a decorative tray that she can use to present to you the
energy contained therein.

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She
describes her work as a “journey,” a diary of all of her travels, be it
throughout the world, or through her own city or country. Encountering new
things along they way, she personalizes them, changes them, creates something
different so that you, the viewer, has the opportunity to see something
different, something new. Ledia commented that artists have become distanced
from their public, and with her work she aims to bridge that gap. It is not
only her playful and heartwarming contributions to the surrounding landscape
that achieves this goal, but the way in which she involves the viewer in her game,
enabling them to play along with her.

 

 

Ledia’s opportunities