Iva Lulashi Torta nuziale, 2022

Torta nuziale is an oil painting on canvas.

It depicts a naked man and woman lying next to each other on a round bed. The title “Torta nuziale” (wedding cake) implies a marital bedding. It remains unclear whether the two people in the painting are asleep or exhausted—a gap in meaning that is representative of Lulashi's practice.

The imagery in Lulashi’s paintings are sourced from films and videos, populated mainly by female bodies. Lulashi's work creates tension around love, desire and violence. A deeply Albanian feature in her painting is her relationship with reality, which has been influenced by socialist realism and film and video as a means of communist propaganda. movies. Conscious of their bodies, the characters take ownership of their sexuality and exercise their right to physical pleasure.