Genti Korini, Noemi Smolik and
Slavs and Tatars
in conversation moderated by Małgorzata Ludwisiak, “A Place in the Sun and politics of contemporary art language”, artist talk
8 October 2026, 19:00
Where is “a place in the sun” and what can we say about it? Does the unknown attract or frighten us more today? What does the trans-rational language of zaum, invented by the first avant-garde artists over a century ago, have in common with contemporary art? And how can we define politics of contemporary art language today?
Albanian artist Genti Korini, co-founder of Slavs and Tatars collective Payam Sharifi and art historian and art critic Noemi Smolik will address the question of the unknown, outline non-obvious geographies and explore the function of art today.
The public conversation, moderated by a Polish curator and art critic Malgorzata Ludwisiak, will be held in response to Genti Korini's video project A Place in the Sun for the Albanian Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2026 and to the Mousse publication under the same title. The video work will be screened in the beginning of the meeting.
Free admission
Language: English
Duration: 1.5 hours
Doors open at 18:30. Event starts at 19:00.
Language: English
Duration: 1.5 hours
Doors open at 18:30. Event starts at 19:00.
Genti Korini lives and works in Tirana, Albania. His recent video work A Place in the Sun has been presented in the Albanian Pavilion in the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2026.
Shifting fluidly between painting, sculpture, photography and video, Korini’s imagery often explores the migration and transformation of decontextualized forms and symbols, treating them as markers of broader cultural and ideological change.
Noemi Smolik is an art historian and art critic who grew up in Prague. She studied art history, history and philosophy in Cologne and New York. She was a professor at the art academies in Hamburg, and Dresden. She is contributing regularly to artforum (New York), frieze (London), e-flux (New York) and for Kunstforum (Cologne) among others. She is a co-founder of the platform Hope Recycling Station in Prague, which deals with questions of racism, colonialism and post-colonialism in art in countries of the former Soviet sphere of influence.
Małgorzata Ludwisiak, Ph.D. is a Warsaw-based independent curator, art critic, art historian, and museum management expert. She has been a curator of the Albanian Pavilion in La Biennale di Venezia 2026.
Slavs and Tatars is an internationally renowned art collective devoted to an area East of the former Berlin Wall and West of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia.
The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, books and lecture-performances.