Artist Statement
What happens in the space between contradiction—when opposing forces don’t resolve, but coexist?
I navigate the tension between empathy and apathy, order and chaos, past and present. My work exists in the in-between, where contradictions collide and transformation emerges. Through film, sculpture, and design, I bend rigid structures, both physical and conceptual, forcing them to break, shift, and reassemble.
I am drawn to the cracks—spaces where memory and identity blur, where reality fractures and reforms. Inspired by Martin Puryear’s defiance of material constraints and Maya Deren’s surreal disruptions of time and space, I work with materials and narratives that resist easy definition. In my hands, they twist, unravel, and reconfigure, revealing new possibilities.
I do not restore order; I disrupt and reimagine. In the liminal spaces between control and spontaneity, harmony and discord, I craft experiences that challenge perception.
The in-between is not absence—it is a force of its own, where fragmentation becomes creation.
Excerpt from Thesis:
Shifting Roots: Echoes of Identity and Memory in Migration
By Klea Sinani
“In our living room, silence hummed louder than the TV. My grandfather gripped the remote like a lifeline, flipping between fragmented news and the distant sound of old Albanian folk songs. My grandmother, mostly silent due to dementia, watched with eyes that tried to speak. This space—polished and modern—hid ruptures: the quiet weight of dislocation, the inherited grief of migration.”
My thesis explores how migration and generational trauma echo through domestic spaces, family archives, and collective storytelling. Through participatory photo collages, silhouette cutouts, and home video remixes created with my Albanian immigrant family, I trace how memory and identity are reconstructed across borders and generations.
Rather than viewing migration as a singular rupture, I examine it as an emotional terrain shaped by ritual, silence, resilience, and longing. My work seeks to illuminate the spaces between—between countries, between generations, and between what is remembered and what resists being told.