The Dictator Visits the Studio

Abstract

In 1969, Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha wrote an open letter addressed to Kristaq Rama, Shaban Hadëri, and Muntaz Dhrami – the most prominent sculptors in socialist Albania – that contained a series of conceptual and aesthetic considerations bearing upon the creation of the massive Vlora Independence Monument then being realised by the sculptors. The three sculptors likewise responded with an open letter, and this exchange subsequently became one of the key documents of socialist Albanian cultural history. This article considers the way these letters functioned to shape the narrative of art’s relationship to political power and the narration of history in Albania. It explores the kinds of agency attributed to the dictator, to state sculptors, and to the monumental work of art, and considers how the discourse surrounding the exchange served to conceptualise the process of creating public sculpture under socialism as a reflection of the inherently collaborative nature of socialist contemporaneity.