lives and works in Tirana
Olson Lamaj, born in 1985 in Tirana, is an Albanian artist. Between 2004 and 2010 he studied Visual Arts in Italy. He graduated as a painter from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 2008, and received his M.A degree in photography from the Academy of Fine Arts Brera in Milan in 2010.
Lamaj’s work investigates social and political issues related both to contemporary life in Albania and to more universal and timeless systems of meaning extending beyond immediate conditions. As one of the co-founders of MIZA Gallery in Tirana, Lamaj’s own experience as an artist has been related to the establishment of artistic spaces and institutions in Tirana. Lamaj’s projects emphasise the semiotic over saturation and the mysterious, almost mystical qualities of objects and images related to political ideologies of various kinds. His artworks function as a collective mythography of the present, laying the groundwork for the projection and creation of new myths.