Yesterday, 8 October 2026, the exhibition “We Are Doing Well” opened as a winning project of the fourth edition of the “DwP Creations” call for artistic projects.
The exhibition opened at the former “Hivzi Sulejmani” library in Qafa and will remain open until 6 November 2026, every working day from 12:00 to 16:00.
This exhibition by Manushaqe Ibrahimi and Çlirimtare Januzaj, curated by Blerta Hoçia, moves through personal and public archives, the media of the time, materials produced by journalists and photojournalists, and pauses to listen to the accounts of people who lived through that moment. It begins, first of all, as often happens, with the stories and experiences of parents and family members, in which shared histories and traumas take on universal dimensions, and where each person finds a fragment of their former self, buried deep within memory.
As part of her research, Manushaqe has also incorporated her father's personal archives; alongside his wartime memories, he had long preserved a number of videotapes containing programs from Albanian Television (TVSH), in which a clean, beautifully composed world appeared as an ideal homeland: that place to which we belong and that belongs to us. From these moving images, the artist extracts only the landscapes of mountains, forests, fields, and people working the land, accompanied by the sounds of a flourishing Albania. She presents these alongside the real place that those displaced by the war encountered in the camps of Kukës, Tropojë, Durrës, and elsewhere.
A contrast that is intensified by the images of the original announcements, photographed and reprinted for the exhibition, which are superimposed onto this landscape. The work of the two artists intertwines both conceptually and in real life. Following a map that is as personal as it is collective, Çlirimtare begins with a photograph taken at the exact time and place where she was born: inside the tent of a refugee camp in Kavajë, which she shares with the public as an invisible trace of the time. From there, she draws a line that passes through significant places and moments, bringing together memories and the people who carry them through interviews and emotions that are still part of that distant journey.
This is precisely why this exhibition is dedicated to that moment: the point where, after departing under extraordinary circumstances, the long journey to the borders of Albania or Macedonia, the chaos, the pain, and the uncertainty regarding oneself, family, loved ones, and home, arrival did not equate to salvation.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at yesterday’s opening!
This project was supported by the Swiss Confederation – the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and NED.
