By H. E. Mrs. Adia Sakiqi, Albanian Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Photography: Embassy of Albania in The Hague
When I take a break from politics, I reflect on Albania’s unique heritage of art and photography. For the first, I constantly think of improving ways of communication and then I fall back into the latter, artistic forms of expression, art so fragile that unconditionally accepts auto-criticism.
We organized the first photo exhibition ‘Albania from Air and under Water’ in January 2015 at the House of Europe in The Hague, on the occasion of Albania’s obtaining EU candidate status in 2014. Aerial photography of rugged and rocky Riviera’s white cliffs and fertile fields, exhibited the intensity of the landscapes, together with the diversity and occurrence of cultural and natural heritage sites. I am proud to say that these pictures incited many viewers to travel to Albania later on. Their journey was memorable, I was told.
Based on the success of the photo exhibition, we now have a permanent space in our embassy dedicated to exhibitions of Albanian artists. Albanian Embassy Art Gallery is open to the Dutch public at Hoge Nieuwstraat 22, in The Hague.
We are definitely not the first art gallery in the Hague, but we are one of the first embassy art galleries in the city. I am delighted to invite you to our gallery and take you through the works of art which depict the simple and the complicated, the ordinary and the extraordinary of the everyday life of the people of Albania. Our gallery window remains open to the curious glance of the passers by while our embassy staff is hospitable to the visitors during our opening hours.
Moreover, numerous events, cultural and political debates will take place at Albanian Embassy Art Gallery.
I am delighted to invite you to learn about Via Egnatia, in Albania, an international hiking path and travel destination, a fascinating travel in the mountains with Mediterranean vegetation, rich with aromas of sage, oregano and rosemary and herbal tea combined with the warm colors of shrub that stay green all year around.
Yet, as the past serves us well to envisage the future, we need to rethink and reconstruct the present. Via Egnatia served as one of the main roads connecting east and west, part of it goes through modern Albania.
Thousands of years later, as the Western Balkan countries are progressing in the long process toward EU membership, in August 2014, Chancellor Angela Merkel launched a process, which we now in the South Mediterranean refer to as the Berlin Process, i.e., support for the European perspective of the Western Balkans based in interconnectivity. Interconnectivity among the countries of the Western Balkans’ region via common infrastructural projects, interconnectivity in the energy sector, that all starts with the interconnectivity of cultures.
There will be no prosperity and economical progress without regional cooperation and dialogue in the Western Balkans. We cannot have a constructive dialogue with Brussels without dialoguing with our neighbors. Striving for the stability of neighbors is investing in our own stability. That is why Albania has endorsed Kosovo membership in UNESCO.
Communication of the youth, cultural exchanges, protection of our diverse cultural heritage will be the catalysts of our economic prosperity. It all starts with communication and cultural exchanges of the young generation. That is why I cannot help but fall back to culture and art for all it offers.
For information:
http://www.punetejashtme.gov.al/
http://www.ambasadat.gov.al/netherlands/en
