Homeward

Taking its title from a symbolic journey towards home, Homeward is a shared topos of memory, identities, a state of energy. Home here is not necessarily a fixed place but the sense of belonging, a movement shaped by institutions and individuals who create, collaborate, and exchange ideas about art and the condition of being an artist in today’s world. The exhibition unfolds as a constellation, where identities and memories glow in relation rather than in place.

Marking the tenth anniversary of the Art House, Homeward celebrates a decade-long commitment to building a community where artists, arts professionals, and local citizens grow together through learning, support, and exchange. Founded as a gesture of return to their local community, the Art House embodies the Paci family’s enduring engagement with contemporary art and artistic discourse, through the hybrid co-existence of the private with the public. This exhibition invites reflection on ten years of shared growth while imagining the future of the Art House as a living organism within the community of Shkoder.

Homeward also reflects on a return not only to a place but to a spirit of shared creation. Thirty-three artists come together as a polyphonic ensemble, their works resonating with questions of identity, love, history, borders, climate justice, and domestic violence, marked by diasporic paths and the shifting experiences of migration and home. These voices are manifested through a wide range of practices spanning painting, performance, installation, sculpture, and moving image.

The participating artists have been integral in this vivid community through the Art House School residency across its four editions; one of the foundation’s core programs dedicated to empowering emerging artists from the region. These schools offered an alternative model of learning, not as a vertical transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, but as a circular exchange of experience, reflection, and practice among peers. Today, the artists return together, bringing with them the choices, paths, and experiences gathered since. Alongside them, the exhibition honors a special guest and, at the same time, the true host: Ferdinand Paci (1940–1975). His drawings bridge past and present, recalling his passing fifty years ago. His presence offers a poignant connection across generations, linking memory, legacy, and continuity.

In keeping with the Art House’s dedication to local synergies and city engagement, the exhibition unfolds across the city center in five private and public, secular and religious venues. From its original home at the Art House, it extends to the Franciscan Auditorium, the Marubi National Museum of Photography and the Civic Gallery of Shkodër, longstanding partners of the institution. On this occasion, a new space opens to the city: the Radio Shkodra building, is transformed into a cultural venue and a living historical exhibit for the first time.

Homeward is a journey of returning to the roots of what first set everything in motion. And now here we are again with the same spirit of engagement, yet wiser and richer thanks to everyone who has contributed throughout it, co-creating its legacy. Can we now imagine the next ten years? Perhaps not entirely, but certainly, yes.

Luçjan Bedeni, Tea Paci, Zef Paci, Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou