The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is a detail of a still from Per Speculum, a 2006 film by Adrian Paci. Milan's francesca kaufmann gallery exhibits Paci's work at the Frieze Art Fair in London from October 11 through 14.

Born in Shkoder, Albania, in 1969, Paci received classical training from the country's Academy of Art. Now exiled from his homeland and living in Milan, the artist addresses displacement and Albania's painful politics in films, photographs, and paintings. Among other venues, he has shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Tate Modern, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, and the Seville and Venice biennials.

Earlier in his career, Paci focused primarily on his family's experiences, waging a quiet battle to preserve his culture. In 2001's Apparizione, Paci's youngest daughter sings unaffectedly to faraway relatives, and in the 1997 video Albanian Stories, another daughter re-enacts bedtime fables. The video's cozy tone shifts, however, when the blasé three-year-old weaves in elements of another story — the Kosovo conflict.

Recent work expands beyond Paci's familial circle. In the acclaimed 2004 film Turn On, unemployed Albanian men are scattered across a village square. In darkness, each turns on an electric generator — a reminder that their country struggles to meet basic human needs. Per Speculum captures countryside children, who hang from an ancient tree and play with shards of a broken mirror — echoing the biblical title drawn from 1 Corinthians 13:12, which begins: "For now we see through a glass darkly." The mirror alludes to folklore, lost innocence, and the search for self-knowledge. A master of symbolism, Paci reveals the complexity of deceptively simple scenes. (LM)