ABOUT THE ARTIST

Genti Korini (b. 1979, Tirana, Albania) works at the intersection of fiction and historical reality, past and present, perception and projection, abstraction and representation. Drawing from the cultural and historical frameworks of his native country Albania, his practice examines the afterlives of modernity, modernism, post-communism, and the neoliberal present – less as fixed narratives than as unstable conditions. His work is research-driven and draws from a diverse range of influences, including art history, architecture, literature, and film.

Working across painting, moving image, photography, and objects, Korini invites viewers to look beyond the surface and engage with deeper political, social, and conceptual implications of the work. His imagery often explores the migration and transformation of decontextualized forms and symbols, treating them as markers of broader cultural and ideological change.

Korini’s recent film for Manifesta 14 (2022), Spider’s Envy, was staged in a modernist ruin, with two actors engaging in a dialogue rooted in a history of communist Albania and its approach to modernism, which led to persecution of many artists. The conceptual strategy implemented in the video is emblematic of Korini’s artistic practice; he moves smoothly between history and the present day, revealing unexpected truths through the carefully built structure of poetic fiction. As Nuit Banai noted (Artforum, June 2019), his work seeks both to diagnose culture and to suggest “new forms of living and working together that connect local tradition and global perspectives.”

Genti Korini is the artist representing Albania, at the 61st Venice Art Biennale with the project A Place in The Sun, curated by Malgorzata Ludwisiak. 2026

Genti Korini studied at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (1997–2000) and earned his MFA from the University of Arts in Tirana, Albania (2001–2003). He is co-founder of the non-profit art space Bazamet in Tirana (2017–2024).

His work has been exhibited extensively, including in Strangers and Others (Basel Social Club, Basel 2025), One Shade the More, One Ray the Less (myGallery, Madrid, 2024), Kindred Visions (Secci Gallery, Florence, 2023), Manifesta 14 (Pristina, 2022), Bright Futures (DoubleQ Gallery, Hong Kong, 2022), Lateral Geometries (IOMO Contemporary, Bucharest, 2021), The Drawing Lesson (Jecza Gallery, Romania, 2019), Notes from the Upperground (Bazament, Tirana, 2019), 'I AM THE MOUTH' ( Museum of Contemporary Art - MSU in Zagreb, Croatia, 2018), PÓŁPRAWDA| HALF–TRUTH (Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture at Królikarnia Palace, Warsaw, 2017), Shape of Time – Future of Nostalgia (MNAC Bucharest, 2016), Art Encounters Biennale (Timisoara, 2016), Fragile Sense of Hope (meCollectors Room, Berlin, 2014), The Object and Its Background (Jecza Gallery, Romania, 2014), and Ephemeral Structures (National Gallery of Albania, 2013).

photo, courtesy of the Artist