Bib Frrokaj lives in Lezhe, Albania, where he has worked as an Art teacher since 2017. As a University of Arts Tirana graduate, Bib has been using photography and video as his main media. The artist was also shortlisted for the 12th edition of ARDHJE Award, one of the most important Albanian prizes for young visual artists under 35. Constantly motivated by discovering how this complex world functions and paying special attention to social problems, Bib focuses on investigating the relationships between the human as a transitory being and nature as an inevitable presence.
His exhibition The Long Wait, consisting of a video and a series of photographs, is an attempt to understand how heavily our inability to move can weigh us down. The lack of freedom is like a heavy concrete block. And Bib knows that.
Placing himself in the middle of a large and flat field belonging to an abandoned airport – where heavy concrete cubes have been distributed almost symmetrically to block the runway -, Bib tells us that flight is impossible. “The heavy stone weights in its place”, an Albanian proverb, invites us to follow his journey through the photographs made during his exploration of his own country throughout the last 3 years: from the rock captured at his birthplace, seating on his childhood’s memories, to scenes in Qeparo, a small village in the south of Albania, Bib Frrokaj tells us that the time has indeed stopped. Everything is a long, heavy waiting.
