Silva Agostini born 1979 in Tirana, is an artist living and working in Berlin. She attended the Academy of Arts in Tirana and the Berlin University of the Arts, where she graduated as master student in 2005.
Silva Agostini grew up in Tirana during the communist regime, she witnessed the opening of Albania and went through the transition years as a teenager. The upheavals that characterized this period significantly influenced her artistic endeavors. With a cinematic perspective, she absorbed the images of Albania's cities and landscapes during that time, interpreting them as a naked portrayal of human existence.
Silva Agostini artistic endeavors focuses on how historical time reveals itself in an ongoing dialogue between past and current events. Her primary source of inspiration is drawn from cultural histories. Elements originating from the realms of arts, architecture, and traditional cultural, religious, and social practices, which render the dispositions of the past, are intricately layered with symbolic meanings and the social dynamics of the present. With her work, she captures the underlying conflicts within societies, portraying them as a perpetually frothing, emotionally blurred dimension of life, while also alluding to the universality of existence over the course of time. Her work includes photography, video, site-specific performances, and urban interventions.
Silva Agostinis works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany and Europe, including: Elevation 1049, Draussenstadt – Call for action, the National Gallery Tirana, Bazament Tirana, Belvedere 21 Wien, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Basis Frankfurt, Grieder Contemporary Zürich, Macedonian Museum of contemporary art Thessaloniki, the Muzeul National de arta contemporana Bucharest, Gallery Isabella Czarnowska Berlin, Kunstsammlung Gera, as well as at the Tirana Biennale. She received the Onufri Award in 2014 and has attended the TICA Residency in 2016 and the Art House in Shkodra 2018. She is a founding member of the project space “Very” in Berlin.