Iva Lulashi

Iva Lulashi (born 1988 in Tirana) is an artist who lives and works in Milan. Love, desire—especially of feminine nature—, impulse, and sexuality are at the core of her work: universal subjects able to transcend differences and overcome boundaries. The images in her paintings are mostly taken from film and video stills, usually little known, which serve as the painting's initial detonator and from which the artist moves away, cutting the cord from the initial inspiration. They are mainly populated by female bodies and suggest scenarios potentially involving the erotic act—as if they were a "right before" or "right after"—without explicitly showing it. The paintings stand out for their "photographic" attitude, but at a closer look they manifest themselves as strongly painterly, made of a livid liquidity, of synthetic brushstrokes devoid of any affectation, leaving many parts of the painting deliberately unresolved and almost abstract. They are an ode to feminine desire, encompassing strength, fear, hope, a desire for freedom, dark sides, and vitality: inseparable themes from a not-yet-past past, laden with global political issues, which one must deal with every day and every night.