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Erdiola Kanda Mustafaj - Fryj, të fryshë, frymë. It's just a touch?
Fryj, të fryshë, frymë. It’s just a touch? is a ritual workshop by Erdiola Kanda, inspired by her Vlach heritage. Drawing from her grandmother’s stories, Kanda guides participants through a ritual of breath, memory, and transmission over three evenings. Each session includes an incantation, ancestral words, and Kanda’s own writing, reactivating the past and creating a space where generations meet in silence.
Dates and times
April 16 to 18, from 19:00 to 20:00
Address
Port of Durrës
Fryj, të fryshë, frymë. It’s just a touch? is a ritual workshop by Erdiola Kanda that examines fictional genealogies and Vlach purification traditions. Rooted in her Vlach heritage, Kanda draws inspiration from interviews with her grandmother to craft a ritual that unfolds at sunset, near the sea. Over the course of three evenings, participants engage in an intimate ritual centered on breath, memory, and transmission. Each session follows a structured sequence: a whispered incantation (bisbiglio), a recitation of ancestral words, and a final invocation of Kanda’s own writing.
As a memetic replication of poses, this repetitive act invokes a certain reverence, also presented here as a “gesture of alternative knowledge or counter-memory”.
Participants receive the ritual becoming vessels for a lineage of purification and storytelling, reactivating the past in the present and creating an imaginary place where far generations can meet, through silence.
Courtesy of the artist
Erdiola Kanda Mustafaj
Erdiola Kanda Mustafaj is an albanian/italian multi-disciplinary artist currently based in Paris. Through a combination of visual and media art, from installation to sound art, she creates imaginary landscapes that embody the indistinct and elusive dimension of societies, places and historical events, with poetic attention to politics and particularly meditating on the significance of diaspora. In her research she appropriates and rewrites sources from personal archives and collective memories to discuss the intellectual and political history of her country, in a narrative that is intertwined with oral tradition, myth and fairy tale. Her works are mainly articulated in a deeply relationship with the space, and its transformation, in which raw material and human create a connection, inseparable, shaping each other without hierarchies of values.
Her work has been shown in several institutional exhibitions including: Solo exhibition at Kunst- im-kreuzgang (Bielefeld, Germany, 2025). Group shows at Luigi Ghirri Prize for Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia, 2025), Ardhje 2024 Prize, Young Visual Artists Award, organised by Zeta Gallery (Tirana, Albania, 2024), “Rencontres de la jeune photographie internationale” curated by François Cheval at Villa Pérochon (Niort, France, 2022), and “Beyond the image” promoted by Shkodra Arthouse and Marubi Museum (Shkodër, Albania, 2019).
The artists
Erdiola Kanda Mustafaj
Erdiola Kanda Mustafaj is an Albanian-Italian multidisciplinary artist currently based in Paris.
Combining visual and media arts, from installation to sound art, she creates imaginary landscapes that embody the indistinct and elusive dimension of societies, places and historical events, with a poetic attention to politics and a particular meditation on the importance of diaspora. In her research, she appropriates and rewrites sources from personal archives and collective memories to discuss the intellectual and political history of her country, in a narrative interwoven with oral tradition, myth and fairy tale. His works are based primarily on a profound relationship with space and its transformation, in which raw material and man create an inseparable bond, shaping each other without a hierarchy of values.