Arbër Zaimi, philosopher, Tirana

“Pak buk’” / “A little bread”

Diluted selves The pandemic came after, masks were already there. What could be a face, if not a palimpsest made of masks. A mask, a self, many masks, many selves, underwriting each-other, asimilated into layers of the human. I am not indivisible, independent or sovereign. I am full of irredentist, separatist selves, that i strive, only with partial success, to dilute into a single subjective agent. That the painter’s portraits and representations of humans came disfigured, almost caricatural, means nothing else to me, but realism. A realism of selves and masks mixing forever, polluting endlessly any potential clarity, like a clairvoyant. Ancient people were aware of this pollution of the subject. They envisioned great floods, rain and rivers, that could clean this mess, because they felt impotent against it. Millenia passed by, and we still wait for the rain, that could divide mask from mask, simplify faces, purify selves. Will Arianit’s models get some of that rain…