Tami Notsani : « Unheard Stories »

In the 30's the king of Albania Zog I, entrusted the best Italian architect of the time, Cherardo Bosio, the construction of a Royal Palace, now called the Palace of the Brigades. Located on a hill and surrounded by a park from which the king and his entourage could enjoy a panoramic view of the city, it was never inhabited by the king and his family and remains today as it was designed.

If it does not appear on the long list of buildings demolished by the dictatorship in power in Albania during the Cold War, it is because commissioned by Zog I, it was designed, built and completed by other actors who sowed the seeds of their own ambitions, their attachment to this territory, its soil and its inhabitants. Despite its costly maintenance, successive governments have all appropriated it to magnify their official events.

Today, the Palace remains in service, in the hands of a democracy won by neo-liberalism who watch over this jewel of Albanian heritage commanded by an authoritarian king and used only yesterday by a dictator.

Tami Notsani had the privilege to photograph this place where everything is luxury, calm and pleasure. She gives us back the old-fashioned charm, a little faded of these pieces of furniture delivered to a forced solitude, witnesses of a past and almost unknown because locked in a space-time capsule on the borders of Tirana, on a small wooded hill.

Born in Israel in 1972, Tami Notsani lives and works in Paris and Israel.
She left her scientific studies for photography at the Bezalel School of Fine Arts in Jerusalem and continued her studies with a postgraduate degree at Le Fresnoy, the national studio of contemporary art.

Through a practice that evolves between photography, video and more recently installation and participative performances, she leads an in-depth reflection on identity, intimacy, memory, transformation and transmission.

She develops an artistic work where the image holds an essential place. "Her photographs show a familiar universe, subject to an ineluctable evolution in time, the landscapes change, the people change appearance, the similarities of the geographical marks are superimposed. The idea of identity and its relation to History becomes fundamental, especially in her recent performative installations in which spectators are invited to take part". Anna Olszewska, exhibition curator.

Her work has been presented in France and abroad in numerous institutions and contemporary art events, including: the European Month of Photography, MNHA, Luxembourg; "Au bazar du genre", MUCEM, Marseille; the MAMCO, Geneva; Nuit Blanche, Paris; Emily Harvey Gallery, New York; Ashdod Museum of Art, Israel, as well as the Rencontres Photographiques d'Arles.

Her work can be found in several collections and institutions such as the MAMCO in Geneva, the departmental collection of Seine-Saint-Denis, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, the Ashdod Art Museum and the Discount Bank in Israel, as well as in various private collections in France, Israel, United States, Hungary, Switzerland and Italy.