The Balkan Scene is a new Instagram series by Balkan Projects, sharing short conversations with artists working across the Balkans 🇷🇸 🇲🇪 🇭🇷 🇧🇦 🇽🇰 🇦🇱 🇲🇰 🇬🇷 🇧🇬 and tracing the ideas, places, and conditions shaping their practices.
We’re happy to present a short conversation with artist Amalia Vekri (Greece)
@amalia_vekri who is concluding her residency in Tirana, Albania with Art Explora
@art.explora
Balkan Projects: Tell us about a bit about your work:
Amalia Vekri: My work looks into what happens when images created to stir desire or fear shift function, and slip into ambiguity. I often employ elements from horror cinema and gothic literature examining how bodies can become threatening and repulsive while remaining fetishised and coveted. Initially appearing youthful and attractive, and fooling around with male fantasies, yet looking closer this first impression is disrupted, and especially through the use of colour that turns violent and toxic.
Balkan Projects: What was particurlary interesting for you to do the residency in Tirana?
Amalia Vekri: The place of the residency itself was very compelling for me, the villa of Albania’s ex dictator. A house with a modest modernist exterior but luxurious inside, reflecting the ideological austerity of the time but also the double standards that permeate politics. His personal book collection is also telling; rich on vampirism and conspiracy theories, charged by his paranoia. There is also the Museum of Leaves, dedicated to the surveillance systems during his time.
Short bio: Amalia Vekri is a Greek artist based in Athens. Her work explores female transformation through mythology, horror, sexuality, and ritual. Her paintings often portray fluid bodies and supernatural figures, moving between fear and desire, fragility and power, while reflecting on gender, time, and otherness.
