Guest of the ilb 2007
Ornela Vorpsi was born in
Tirana in 1968. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts there and in
1989 relocated to Italy, where she continued her studies at the
Accademia de Bella Arti di Brera in Milan. In 1997 she graduated from
the Université Paris VIII and since then has worked as a writer,
photographer, painter and video artist in Paris.
At first Vorpsi devoted herself
to the visual arts. Her photographic monograph »Nothing Obvious« (2001)
displays a preoccupation with the female body, with technical accuracy
and allusions to art history positioning itself against the
contemporary penchant for randomness. »With the concept of the
›nakedness‹ of the female body I have always tried in my photographic
work to offer a status report from beyond beauty and sensuality, and
with that to pose questions regarding the impermanence of the body and
time’s toll on it.« Beauty, desire and transcience are also central
themes in her written work, to which Vorpsi is increasingly devoting
her time. Her texts, written in Italian, are usually published first in
French translation. The sense-arousing début »Il paese dove non si
muore mai« (2005; t: The land where one never dies) contains prose
sketches from an Albanian childhood and is a harsh account of the
author's native country in the Communist era. The vulnerable young
protagonist is at the mercy of the brutal society in which she grows
up. She experiences the fundamental absurdity of life in the blend of
lust and hatred of the sexes' encounter and in the atrocious
arbitrariness of the political system itself. The protagonist's father
is arrested on political grounds that remain incomprehensible; the
village school teacher meets the childish belief in angels with a
heated ruler and thrashes the protagonist, envious of her pretty mother
while the latter dolls herself up to look attractive for men whom she
later punishes with scorn.
Vorpsi also assumes the role of
the estranged observer in the collection of thirteen stories »Buvez du
cacao Van Houten!« (2005; t: Drink Van Houten cacao!). In 2006 »Vetri
rosa« (t: Pink cullets; with photographs by the author) was published
alongside texts written by Vorpsi while she was living at the Villa
Kuyoyama near Kyoto. Her most recent work, »La mano che non mordi«
(2007; t: The hand that you don't bite), is set in the former
Yugoslavia, which resembles her native country in uncanny ways.
Among Vorpsi’s distinctions are
the renowned Italian literature prize Grinzane Cavour, the Premio
Viareggio, the Premio Elio Vittorini, the Premio città di Vigevano and
the Prix méditerranéen des Lycéens. The artist has shown her work at
numerous exhibitions in France, Italy, Montenegro, Albania and Belgium.
She currently lives in Berlin as a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin
programme (2007/08) of the German Academic Exchange Service.
© international literature festival berlin | 
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