Muja, Alban: My Name Their City 1-7. (2012)

Placing people bearing unusual names in the center of attention is a recurrent thread in Alban Muja’s work. The My Name Their City series seven Kosovan Albanian people, each of them positioned similarly, in a white, pure space with the photo of city-scape in their hands. Each person’s name is similar with the Albanian city’s of which they hold a picture. „The influence of nationalist identity politics’ of Albanians of Kosovo have resulted a particular phenomenon of naming children after Albania’s towns, mostly during the 70s and 80s. This is linked to a dream of unification of all Albanian territories around the border of modern day Albania into a greater ethnic Albania: originally conceived from the early 19th century and culminating with the independence of Kosovo in the first decade of 21st century. Another factor was the impossibility of Kosovar Albanians to travel to what was felt by them to be the Motherland of their common ethnicity, which only helped foster stronger feelings of nostalgia about the neighbouring Albania.” (Muja)