Work description
’Untitled (books, cart)’ is a composition that is part of the ’Home/House’ cycle (project) that I have been developing lately. This project investigates the relationship between ’home’ and ’house’ as often conflated but disparate concepts. English offers two distinct words to describe an otherwise similar space. However, a dwellings physical appearance is irrelevant to the choice of word. It is the feeling that it gives - of warmth, of chill, of safety, or of necessity. There is a security in the knowing around ’home’ and a distrust in the word ’house’. I was born and raised in Gramsh, Albania and since 2014 I have been living away from my birth ’home’. I have changed the ’house’ many times, between Tirana, Florence and Verona. This made my ’houses’ always temporary in nature - which comes with it worry and unease. And even if I managed to stay for a longer period, it did not guarantee that it turned into my ’home’. With every move, being restricted by what my two hands could carry and the number of trips I was willing to take, I was forced to choose the most essential of things - those things that felt like ’home’ - and leave the rest behind. The ’Untitled (books, cart)’ translates this condition into a spatial environment composed of plaster books and a real cart/trolley, of the kind commonly used to transport objects. The books are reproduced in plaster, a material chosen for its transitory nature that echoes the feeling of ’house’ as temporary.
Biography
Devis Zani, born in 1998 in Gramsh, Albania is a contemporary artist residing and working in Florence, Italy. Zani moved to Italy to continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, in the Department of Visual Arts-Sculpture and obtained the Level I & II Academic Diploma. His works have been presented in group exhibitions and site-specific contexts in Tuscany (Italy) and Tirana (Albania).