Alban E. Smajli
Your work thrives on physical materials. How do you decide which medium becomes the “skin” of your next piece?
Adrian Kiss
For me, the “skin” of the work is often where the human body is, as that has been at the centre of my practice. My relationship with materials is intuitive, a safe space that forms the foundation of my artistic language.
In my earlier work, I struggled to translate my positionality and material intuition into larger narratives, often compelling me to symbolically bury my pieces for transformation and “curing”. This analogy became a guiding methodology for understanding the performativity of materials and the transformative potential of forces. I began investigating how the non-living can act as a performer, embodying time-based processes, under and beyond the influence of the human. When deciding what becomes the 'skin' of a work, I think about its capacity to resist or welcome the passing of time.
Tell us about your childhood obsession with duvets, why does that heavy comfort keep showing up in your installations?
I’m drawn to everyday gestures and the object culture associated with them. I’m especially interested in the things we all must do, like sleeping, but which, sadly, we’re not all allowed to do equally. We all need sleep, but are we given the right to rest? Mattresses, blankets, pillows, and duvets represent the care of home and the comfort of safety. In my installations and sculptures, they often appear without the human figure, and in that absence, they start to become the body. I use them to create a sense of insecurity by juxtaposing their softness and familiarity with more brutal or unstable surroundings.
I only started working with bedding a few years ago, after a long period of engaging with jackets and garments. Duvets, in particular, carry intimate traces, stains, scents, marks, subtle forms of memory and presence. They’re comforting, but they also speak of vulnerability. At my grandparents’, their duvet was filled with thick wool, making it very heavy. As a child, under its heavy-comfort, I often felt trapped and safe.
Say your studio suddenly went analog. No screens or signal, just tools and silence. How might that reshape the way you create, or even the way you think inside your space?
Answering this question tells much about how I work. I haven’t always been in the privileged position to do art full time, I’ve worked alongside my studio practice most of my life. This really shaped what I had access to, time and money-wise. So I often worked by collaborating with other creators to produce parts of my work. This meant I didn’t need much of a studio; much of the experimentation at the start was done on paper. With time, I reconnected with making, and that was a revelation, I found a new purpose in it. But havint this experience, I’m also comfortable working with whatever space and tools I have access to.
No screens and signals, just tools and silence, would mean I am a child again, probably getting bored soon, and through that, entertaining myself through creative explorations of what I have and what I know. Sounds exciting.
