Concept
When you’re constantly asked where you come from, it leads you to think more deeply about it. It was the time, it was the place A couple in a Saxon bar, between Cold and civil war, between ethnicities and ethics, between plans and economy, between dreams and promises I Have a Dream Dismantled with the wall: Promises, Norms, Patterns.
and then – what next the show is over The dream remains let’s go home endures through generations. I'm located at the end of two cultures.
not negative, neutral and identityless looking towards something new, something uncertain.
“Using the Stasi files of her parents, as well as personal and institutional image archives, Verdiana Albano explores her own fragmented and secret-laden Afropean history”. - Dr. Franziska Kunze
Vita
Verdiana Albano (1993) is an Afroeuropean artist based in Frankfurt and Berlin. She studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach until 2021, specialising in photography and installation art. She currently studies at the Ostkreuz School of Photography as part of the Master Class. In 2019, supported by a DAAD scholarship, she lived and studied in Chongqing, China. Her series "surrounded", Chongqing (2019), is now part of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse.
Albano's art and her dedication have been widely recognised with numerous accolades, including the Young Art and New Ways of Bayern Innovativ, the Neustart Kultur Scholarship in 2022, and the Neustart Plus Scholarship in 2023 of Stiftung Kunstfonds.
Her works have been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions across Germany and internationally. She was awarded her first solo exhibition through the ISO 5000 Prize 2021 by Hans and Annemarie Weidmann Foundation. In 2024, she participated in the exhibition “City of Female Photographers – Frankfurt 1844-2024” at the Historical Museum Frankfurt. In 2023 and 2024, her works were showcased at Les Rencontres d'Arles. Additionally, in 2024, she was selected as a follow up and FUTURES Photography Talent by the Freundeskreis für Photographie of Deichtorhallen Hamburg.
In 2023, Albano founded Institute Contemporary—an Afro-European artist network—through her Allianz Foundation Fellowship.
Solo shows 2023-25:
- 11/23 “Nothing half, nothing whole”, Futurium, Berlin
- 08-10/23 “status report”, 1822-Forum — Frankfurter Sparkasse, Frankfurt
- 04-06/23 “building a dream”, Schleuse — Openvillas, Rüsselsheim
Selected group shows 2023-25:
- 09-10/25 “surrounded”, Festival Alt+1000, La Vue-des-Alpes, Neuchâtel, CH
- 04/25 “Nothing half, nothing whole”, MoP, Bordeaux, FR
- 04-06/25 “i ain’t from no east coast”, Un/sichtbar-Generation, House of City History, Offenbach, GER
- 07-09/25 “Nothing half, nothing whole”, Les Rencontres d’Arles, MRO, Arles, F
Jury Statement
In her work I ain't from no East coast, VERDIANA ALBANO deals with her own identity and her family history as the child of an Afro-German couple who grew up in the GDR.
She tries to visualize her personal origins and history by means of a mix composed for the installation of rediscovered photographs from the family album, complex collages of official documents and archive materials, and fully staged images. This results in a highly complex and associative kaleidoscope of social, political and personal aspects.
For this haunting work on the important topic of identity, the jury of the Felix Schoeller Award 2025 honors VERDIANA ALBANO with the Emerging Photographer Award.