Artist
Verdiana Albano
Verdiana Albano (*1993) is an Afro-European artist based in Frankfurt and Hamburg. Throughout her studies at the University of Arts and Design Offenbach until 2021, she specialized in photography and installation art. Supported by the DAAD, she studied and lived in Chongqing, China, in 2019, where she created the series "surrounded," which is now part of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse.
Her works and engagement has been marked by accolades, including the Bayern Innovativ’s Junge Kunst und Neue Wege Stipendium, and grants like the Neustart Kultur Stipend 2022 and Neustart Plus Stipend 2023 from Stiftung Kunstfonds. Albano's works have been showcased in both solo and group exhibitions nationwide and internationally. She premiered her first solo exhibition through the ISO 5000 Prize 2021 of Hans and Annemarie Weidmann Foundation. In 2023 she was part of Les Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles at the Fondation Manuel Rivera-Ortiz.
Albano's influence extends beyond her art, as she has been an invited guest at the German-British Democracy Forum, and held talks for the Hertie Foundation and the BARCAMP of the German Foreign Office. In 2023, she started to establish an Afro-European artist network, leveraging her Allianz Foundation Fellowship to foster collaboration within the artistic community.
i ain’t from no east coast
2024
Germany
When you are often asked where you come from,
it makes you think more about it.
I would say I'm at the end of two cultures.
Not in a negative way.
But in the neutral.
Looking at something new, something uncertain.
I am the daughter of a couple who met in a bar in Saxony, Germany. My mother, a single mother and a worker at the Publicly Owned Enterprise company (VEB) of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), my father, an ex-soldier and contract worker from Angola. They found their love between the Cold War and civil war, between socialism and racism, between dreams and empty promises by the government, between the textile and the motor vehicle factories of VEB. Shortly after they met, the Berlin Wall fell and with it the ethical and economic planned economy, as well as the contracts about his right of residence. Then I was born and shortly afterwards they decided to continue working on the dream of a better life. We moved to the former West.
I guess that was the start of being cultureless.
i ain't from no east coast (working title) is an exploration between documentation and staged photography. Borders are crossed in order to form an answer to the question of belonging and self-definition through narratives of a new personality that carries different cultures within it. It is a journey in whose core socialism plays a formative role and whose path leads between stereotypes, prejudices, affiliations and novelty to the definition of an own gap- and mystery-laden, Afro-European being. It is a story about inner conflicts, decisions, loss and opportunities in a changing society.
Donja Nasseri explores museum spaces and liberates secured objects from display cases by taking 3D scans of them. For her project, she will focus on the example of the figure of the ancient Egyptian king Tutankhamun, addressing questions of reparation and appropriation in the context of the restitution debate.
Malte Uchtmann, will use AI to work on an ‘Atlas of Impossibilities’, reflecting on the construction of knowledge through images. He investigates the visual transformation of assumptions, policies and worldviews into knowledge within encyclopaedias across different historical periods and geographical regions.
Verdiana Albano explores her own fragmented and mystery-laden Afro-European history in a photographic process that moves between staging and documentation. Employing the Stasi files belonging to her parents, alongside personal and institutional image archives, she delves into the implications of being born within the framework of the erstwhile German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Agata Szymanska-Medina scrutinises the contemporary challenge of a global freshwater crisis unfolding in Chile through her photographic work – a crisis which poses a threat to humanity at large. Employing a nuanced narrative approach in her documentary photography, incorporating texts, archival material, video and sound, the photographer unveils the actors entangled in this conflict and the motivations driving them.
Through a synthesis of documentation, essay, and portraiture, Lea Greub delves into the intricate dynamics of the ‘business of love’. Her exploration navigates the interplay between love, financial considerations and societal expectations within relationships, particularly in venues like wedding fairs and single-date trips, where these connections are both forged and exhibited.