Mercurius Exhibition (feb. 2026)
Venue: Temporary exhibition space, Elbasan, Albania
This exhibition is the result of a five-month artistic and practice-based research emerging from the project Self in Flux: Persona and the Veiled Self. Developing through a “dialogue” between alchemical symbolism and contemporary art practice, the exhibition presents itself with a multidimensional artistic character: Mercurius symbolizes the human being, while the artworks manifest his language.
Like Mercury, art itself can become an axis of unification and a space for reflection, discovery, and the self-integration of inner world.
The works in the exhibition invite each viewer into a shifting state between body and spirit, image and language, self and other. These works do not seek solutions, but rather deepen in the tension inherent in the transformation of the self. Here, Mercurius is simultaneously guiding principle and a mirror: he provokes questions by opening paths toward reflection and renewal.
Through an interdisciplinary approach of visual art, the exhibition Mercurius invites us to move through space while imagining ourselves deepening into a process of transformation, encountering fragments that echo, contradict, and converge.
Concept
Self in Flux: Persona and the Veiled Self is a contemporary art project by Elbasan-based visual artist Kristian Zara, supported by the Swiss Cultural Fund in Albania (2025).
This interdisciplinary project spans painting, sculpture, installation, and video art, exploring the psychic world as a source of today’s socio-political context. In a country where independent authenticity often lingers in the shadow of self-appearance, the project merges art with psychoanalysis and alchemy to investigate how inner experiences are shaped, displaced, and reformed—bridging forth a fragmented, intangible world.
Running from 10 August 2025 to 31 January 2026, Self in Flux combines studio practice with public programming: five open studio events (20 September, 18 October, 15 November, and 6 & 23 December) and a scenographic exhibition (27 Jan. – 8 Feb. 2026), followed by a conversation with the artist (6 Feb. 2026).
Drawing on Jungian inquiries into persona and shadow—alongside the symbolic language of alchemy—Zara’s work foregrounds visual and material transformation as psychic process. Through clay, plaster, lime, linen, and resin, masks and sculptural installations become instruments for probing authenticity, collective memory, and intergenerational traces. A time-based video work will extend the inquiry into another temporal and performative layer.
Self in Flux ends with Mercurius that functions as a tool for reflection, confrontation, critique, and self-discovery—inviting individuals to examine their inner worlds in relation to collective and societal expectations. One of the artist’s central aims is to explore the concept of authenticity as it dissolves and reshapes under the influence of inherited pasts and present-future responsibilities.
The theoretical framework touches on history, intergenerational trauma, alchemical processes, collective memory, and contemporary developments—all informing the visual language of the artworks.
Moreover, the project arrives as a cultural act in the city of Elbasan, which currently lacks a gallery or dedicated space for visual art exhibitions.
