Anila Rubiku
Endje: Wander-Weaving
Curated by Edi Muka
November 20, 2024 – January 24, 2025
Assab One is pleased to present Endje: Wander-Weaving, a solo exhibition dedicated to the artist Anila Rubiku curated by Edi Muka.
Drawing on the dual meanings of the Albanian word “Endje“, which signifies both weaving and wandering, Rubiku invites visitors to experience her visionary blend of craft, storytelling, and social commentary.
Rubiku’s practice embodies this concept of “wander-weaving”, intertwining the physical act of weaving with the free, exploratory nature of wandering. Her extensive body of work spans a variety of mediums and themes—from poetry and gender relations to social justice and the perception of time—each piece reflecting aspects of her own life journey. Yet, the needlework remains a constant to which she returns throughout her work, weaving together and giving body to past and present experiences of her life journey.
Two evocative and wide-ranging projects inhabit the space. Ain’t I a Woman? pays tribute pioneering women of freedon and, through a collaboration with Romani women in Durrës, Albania, highlights struggles shared by women across generations. In an act of acknowledgement and giving back, Anila embroidered 150 handkerchiefs with their names, celebrating their often-overlooked contributions throughout history. The project continues to evolve and grow, adding new names at each new iteration. Instead, The Inner Door is an abstract exploration of form, color, and texture. The work, inspired by the inner doors of Milanese residential buildings, offers a poetic meditation on the concept of “home” and transforms the artist’s wanderings into a visual language. Each piece invites the viewer to step through these “inner doors,” into Anila Rubiku’s threaded world, where the boundaries of architecture and emotion blur into a delicate tapestry of memories and experience.
At last, Defiants’ Portraits #1-12, presented as an appendix to the exhibition in the Sala Roland within the former control cabin of the printing machines, addresses the social issue of women victims of domestic violence. Realised together with a group of female inmates in a Tirana prison, the works on display are meant to be an act of denunciation of the lack of protection for vulnerable groups of women and the absence of legal defence.
Assab One
Via Privata Assab 1, 20132 Milano
