HOTel

2014-2016

Installation / First edition 10 x 2.5m / Second edition 3.8 x 1m

The first three letters lighten with electric bulbs are seen by the artist as the ‘leftover’ of what is left of a past system.
The phenomenon of the destruction of a former system is often seen in many transition countries, including where the artist comes itself, where switching from one system to another, to those urban and industrial buildings which have not yet gone through privatization of the new system, often in the democratic system has also failed. This has also happened with the ‘HOTel’ artwork as a synonym for the city, which shows the past of a ‘city’ that was supposed to help and develop the economy of communist Albania.
While the three remaining letters ‘HOT’ show the time that is found today in the industrial city of the ‘Metallurgy’, where apart from the walls of large buildings and ruins, and also many ill people suffering from this carcinogenic industrial factory (steelworks), nothing reminds you of what this city has been built for (the HOT-spot of the Albanian economy).
HOTel artwork has been made and presented for the first time at the Informal Mind’ (October 2014) exhibition in public space in the city of Elbasan in Albania (at the Elbasan Steelworks), where today it doesn’t remind you of anything of an industrial city with a great potential for an ex-Communist state.