Eriola Pira

Pira is an independent curator and writer, and the Program Director of Foundation for Civil Society's Young Visual Artists Awards, an international fellowship for young visual artists in Central Europe and the Balkans that includes national exhibitions and a residency program in New York.

Eriola's main areas of research and curatorial interest are contemporary art practices, avant-garde history and legacy, critical theory and post-socialist culture. Eriola completed an M.A. in Visual Culture Theory from New York University and researched contemporary Albanian art as a Fulbright Fellow. Her thesis, "Portraits of Place: Representations of the City and the Urban Experience in Contemporary Albanian Art," examined the Albanian capital city, Tirana, as a space constructed both through built structures and the pervasive repetition of specific visual imagery in contemporary visual culture and artistic production. She is committed to supporting and working with young Albanian artists and showing international contemporary art in the country.