“The fact of being at a crossroads, at the frontier of two separate identities, underlies all my work on film.”

With his family, Adrian Paci fled to Italy from Albania’s violent unrest in 1997. Paci’s works portray people in ‘in-between spaces’ where the idea of home is found somewhere between fading memories and intangible wishes.

His video work titled ‘Centro di Permanenza Temporanea’ is a bitter metaphor for the reality of an escaping human. The title of the work refers to the Italian detention centres that house refugees and illegal immigrants. People who have illegally entered the country are exported to spaces on the periphery: camps where they wait for the return to their country of origin. Many attempt to escape from the camps, to a life without official papers.

The artist’s personal history is reflected also in the series of photographs titled ‘Back Home’ (2001). Paci took pictures of the homes his friends had left behind in Albania when moving to Italy, then painted backdrops based on the photographs. After this, he photographed the friends’ families in front of these painted backgrounds in his studio. Here, they stand in front of the past they have left behind.

Adrian Paci was born in 1969 in Albania. He now lives and works in Milan. Paci’s works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and New York’s MoMA PS1.