For the first time, a television camera captures Enver Hoxha's Death Mask up close.
The guests of the Essence show in TV Report that appears every Wednesday at 23:00 p.m. and every Friday at 21:00 p.m. talked about the way of conceiving the totalitarian past yesterday and today through an object very little known to Albanians: Enver Hoxha's death mask. The first to speak in the written press about Enver Hoxha's death mask, is Journalist Ben Andoni. In an article of his for Java Magazine in 2004, among other things he writes:
- He doesn't speak anymore. It must be somewhere for a long time, where in his land they cannot decipher it. Many have sent him to Hell, while others, just as surely, to Heaven. As if talking about something completely unimportant, the bureaucrat gives me an endless series of excuses. But, she is. It is registration number 3786... in the National Historical Museum.
"-I proposed that the mask should be prepared quickly". Remembers Mumtaz Dhrami in the writing of Ben Andon, as the sculptor before whom he often posed in life and the man who was commissioned to take his death mask. Dhrami further says:
- We did not agree because Nexhmija told us that his skin was breaking, while we should have contact with his portrait. We told them that the skin does not break, while they continued to insist that it does and... Sulo (Gradeci) then communicated to us that it would be taken after the tributes were over. A week passed since the tributes were paid. Meanwhile, the body degraded and the face lost its characteristic features. In the end, on the day we were going to deal with the mask, we saw that his physiognomy had been transformed. The shapes had changed, while the nose had lost its profile, everything was out of character, but we took the mask" - concludes the 70-year-old sculptor, who has never heard of Enver's mask since that day.
Journalist Ben Andoni continues further by going into other details that are directly related to this work:
-Actually, the death mask no longer worked. At least to him, in front of whom he often posed... Was it just a whim of the communist leaders for eternity in the minds of people or just a reconciliation. In the post-war years, one of the Albanian sculptors had brought the copy of Lenin's death mask to Tirana. It should still be in the house of one of the artists of the capital, like many eyes throughout the East. People's desire remained until material perpetuation, because as for the spiritual one, it was not accepted... At least apparently. Just before death, the communists returned like everyone else, scared to death... by the anxiety of the morning.
But the memories are not so random. There is also a connection with some other Albanian death masks. Because in our tradition, the mask of death has not been cultivated much! Here is what Ben Andoni says about a memory of a conversation with Father Zef Plumi:
-When Fishta died, we Franciscans called an Italian Jesuit, Fr. A. Sala, who was a sculptor; he took off the death mask, which you gave us in two plaster copies. From them, a former student of our high school, Tomë Leci, took out the mold from which he worked six more pieces, which we distributed among kind friends to save them, since the "new" government tried to destroy every traces of Fishta, but not the mask of his face", I remember the words of Father Zef Pllum, one of the few people left alive who knew Fishta.
Here, Ben Andoni adds some more data citing the time of the meeting with Father Zef Plumi:
- But the Franciscans fought and knew that the mask was more than a mask, it constituted the land itself, where the parts of the poet's soul were. Why not the material protection of the earth against them. Those were bad times for God's people. And who could disappear these particles... So, apparently, no one "remembered" about them.
Ben Andoni goes even further. He stops at Ahmet Zogu with his modest request:
-I remember that I also insistently asked for the King's death mask, but a lengthy promise... It ended with a diplomatic response from the Court Spokesperson: -They have nothing here. Nothing is known even in Paris.
For this reason and others from his writing, some human and historical evidences are related, Ben Andoni stops at this start, or more precisely at this honest start for the construction of such masks:
- The stylized mask of the head of the famous Kara Mahmut Bushatliu served me as an argument. I have seen him in Cetinje, and with his head is the beginning of every search for masks... While for us the making of the Mask has been a relatively new culture, it has been very important in the Civilizations, where the burial culture remained important. Anthropomorphic masks were often used in ceremonies that accompanied death and the departure of the soul. Funeral masks were made immediately after a person died and it was a duty for Christians, which was done after taking the last communion. In general, their purpose was to best represent the characteristics of the deceased, either to honor him or her, but also to establish a connection through the mask with the spirit world. Could Enveri have left it as a bequest or was it a "forced" ritual of the people who surrounded her... She has never worked for anyone, and if it was for her duty to remain with art, she would it was performed immediately, while like a ritual it was done at the end of the days of homage, when it had lost almost every function?! Death masks can represent the last moment of life and are actually made to create portraits afterwards by artists.
Journalist Ardit Rada, who wrote one of the first articles about Enver Hoxha's death mask, said in the show Essence, which is directed by journalist Eljan Tanini:
-Father Gjergj Fishta, Mitrush Kuteli, Karamahmut Pashë Bushatlliu, Father Zef Pllumi, Alqi Kondi, Avni Rustemi, Mitrush Kuteli have a death mask. A simple search in the funds of the National Historical Museum shows us that even Albanian figures have not escaped the mask of death. The last image of Enver Hoxha is the registry number 3786, while the mask was made a week after the death of the former dictator, in April 1985. The staff of the National Historical Museum was afraid of glorifying the dictator. It was Mumtaz Dhrami, the person who directed the actions, he considers the mask as something worthless as it does not preserve Hoxha's main features. The corpse had lost its features after a week of being in the refrigerated coffin. The mask was made under strong security measures, with the presence of State Security officers, in the hall where Hoxha's body stayed for a week for homage. Mumtaz Dhrami told me that "I did not make the mask... There were two other workers who are called shapers. While the Security employees who followed us during the process were scandalized. Enver Hoxha's death mask has not been taken from the family, or even requested at all. Death masks have many other world figures. Tom Leci was the one who kept the death mask of Father Gjergj Fishta. Anyway, that mask, Enver Hoxha's mask, has anatomical problems, because it was taken a week after his death. This mask has no reason to offend anyone, let a pavilion with such masks be created. Enver Hoxha's mask does not reveal her identity, however it has its value. Today we have almost nothing from Enver Hoxha, except political parties that accuse each other.
While Ardian Isufi, the visual artist who a few years ago made a work of art, or as it is otherwise known, an installation performance in the premises of the National Historical Museum, says this:
- The death mask of the dictator Enver Hoxha comes as "Anti-homage", because we are still hostages of that time. THE ARTIST SHOULD ALWAYS BE REAL. I was inspired for this installation by a newspaper that I found quite by accident. The public should not see the work through the eyes of the artist. I remember that day Fatos Lubonja told me that if I go inside the museum to see Enver Hoxha's death mask, I will break it. My work is a tease to make the audience find their own answers.
Eljan Tanini: - When I saw the mask for the first time, it evoked coldness, negativity, anti-homage, sadness between positivity and homage at the same time!
Ardian Isufi: - We need to review our history, we lack democracy. The mask should have been exhibited in the museum, even with the installation. This is one of the most important works of my creativity. Feedback, even negative, has been good for my work. When Max Velo saw Enver Hoxha's death mask, he said: "You did well to bring it to the public."
The artist Besart Papa, regarding the method, the construction but also the calm you must have in front of the creation of a death mask, said:
-"Technician is needed! It's not that simple. You have to be calm, look death in the eye. They cannot take the entire portrait of the person who has passed away. You should not think about death, but about the quality of the work, because otherwise nothing can be done. All this takes her attention, since death asks no one, just as the plaster on the face has its own trouble. A problem that you almost have to solve in at least a quarter of an hour. Either or as soon as possible". /Telegraph/
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