Moving Monument – Moving Back

2021/2023

Sculpture, 500 x 361 cm

In his work commissioned for the 3rd Autostrada Biennale in 2021, Alban Muja focused on a disappeared monument to equality and progress that once stood in the center of his hometown of Mitrovica. Erected during the Yugoslav era in the early 1970s, the monument was abruptly removed in 2010, and its status remains unknown. The monument was entitled “Work, Freedom, Education,” and featured the outline of two men and a woman holding tools, a pigeon, and a book, representing the values of work, education, and freedom, which were emblematic of the socialist idealist society. Although the reason for the monument’s disappearance remains unclear, it lives on in the collective memory of Mitrovica’s residents. The work was a symbol of talent and creativity of Mitrovica’s artists at that time, seamlessly merging the ideological concept with the technical realization, while reflecting the industrial world that once promoted the city and the ideology of the time. In the last edition of Autostrada a miniature version of the vanished monument emerged in the middle of Prizren creating a surprise and a gossip. Now, two years later it is time for this anti-fascist memorial to come home. Muja has now re-installed an old/new/moving “Work, Freedom, Education,” monument back to its home at Mitrovica Square.

(Text by Joanna Warsza and Hana Halilaj)