1. “Memaliaj: Minatorët prisnin bustin e tyre, bashkia vendos atë të Roki Balboas,” Jeta Osh Qejf (JOQ), June 1, 2017, http://joq.al/artikull/175423.html (accessed June 21, 2018). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Albanian to English are by the author.

2. “Minatorët prisnin bustin.”

3. The author carried out unstructured interviews with ten residents of Memaliaj during fieldwork in Albania in the summers of 2017 and 2018. The interviews were conducted in Albanian. Five of these residents (all male) had worked in the town's mine during socialism, and these five residents were interviewed in both 2017 and 2018; the other five residents had not worked in the mine, and were only interviewed in 2018. Unless otherwise noted, information on the opinions of Memaliaj's residents is drawn from the author's fieldnotes. Names of these informants have not been used.

4. Përparim Halili, “‘Pedonalja’: 1 miliard lekë në Memaliaj dhe disa pyetje ‘delikate,’ lidhur me projektin e saj,” Telegraf, August 29, 2016.

5. The use of the qualifier “postsocialist” to describe contemporary Albania demands some explanation. There are good reasons for arguing against the use of the term, given that Albania has now spent more than twenty-five years engaged in the relatively vigorous (though also highly conflicted) construction of a democratic society and free market conditions. However, in the current study, the socialist past looms large as a source of identity and as a material remnant. The experiences of the socialist period continue to shape the production of artworks and their reception by new audiences, and they form a kind of heritage that activists can use to strengthen their attempts to reclaim working-class consciousness in the present. On the continued applicability of the term “postsocialism” in fields such as anthropology and sociology, see Humphrey, Caroline, “Does the Category ‘Postsocialist’ Still Make Any Sense?” in Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and Practices in Eurasia, Hann, C.M. (ed.) (New York, 2002), 12–5Google Scholar. In the field of contemporary art history, Anthony Gardner presents a compelling argument for the use of the descriptor “postsocialist” (as opposed to “postcommunist”) in Gardner, Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy (Cambridge, 2015), 8–9.

6. Stenning, Alison, “Where is the Post-socialist Working Class? Working-Class Lives in the Spaces of (Post-)Socialism,” Sociology 39:5 (2005): 987–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Morris, Jeremy, “An Agenda for Research on Work and Class in the Postsocialist World,” Sociology Compass 11:5 (May, 2017): 2–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. The dominance of class-based narratives in the socialist period was part of a concerted effort to construct the very notion of a working class. This was especially true in countries like Albania, where the idea of an urban proletariat was still foreign to most citizens, even in the middle of the twentieth century. On the project of building a working class in Albania, see Olsi Lelaj, Nën Shenjën e Modernitetit: Antropologji e Proceseve Proletarizuese Gjatë Socializmit Shtetëror (Tirana, 2015), an anthropological examination of the practices and discourses used by the Albanian state to generate class-consciousness as a credible belief system. Of course, it was not only in Albania that the very notion of a unified working class had to be consciously constructed—this was common to many nations in the former Socialist Bloc.

8. As Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff argue, the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant form of capitalism in the new millennium, and as the dominant mode of sociality, is global. However, the shift toward neoliberal capitalism as an apparently uncontested paradigm can be best understood, they suggest, by looking at nations where the shift from socialism to neoliberal market structures happened quickly and harshly; see Comaroff and Comaroff, “Millenial Capitalism: First Thoughts on the Second Coming,” in Millenial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism, Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff (eds.) (Durham, NC, 2001), 8–9. Albania, as one of the harshest examples of Stalinist dictatorship, also experienced one of the most difficult transitions to its current neoliberal capitalist condition.

9. For an overview of public monuments dedicated to workers in Southeastern Europe, focused on the case of Yugoslavia, see Sanja Horvatinčić, “Monuments Dedicated to Labor and the Labor Movement in Socialist Yugoslavia,” Etnološka Tribina 44:37 (2014): 169–86. For a discussion of monuments dedicated to laborers in Central Europe during the early postwar period, see Reuben Fowkes, Monumental Sculpture in Post-War Eastern Europe, 1945–1960 (PhD Dissertation, University of Essex, 2002), 232–77.

10. Such studies often draw their impetus from key assessments of the relations between society and urban form, such as David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Athens, GA, 2009) (first published in 1973), and Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (New York, 1989). A key text in the recent examination of working-class existence in relation to these spatial dynamics is Andrew Herod, Labor Geographies: Workers and the Landscapes of Capitalism (New York, 2001), but studies range across disciplines as diverse as geography, anthropology, history, and sociology. A concise overview of work in this field appears in Andrew Herod, “Workers, Space, and Labor Geography,” International Labor and Working-Class History 64 (Fall, 2003), 112–38.

11. For their part, such architectural and art historical studies have been more focused on the fate of monuments, reliefs, murals, and other artworks featuring national leaders or socialist ideologues (such as Marx, Lenin, and Stalin), since the removal or destruction of these representations has been more politically sensational.

12. See note 3 above for an elaboration on the interviews carried out with residents of Memaliaj. In addition to these interviews, the author also carried out interviews (in Albanian) with sculptor Vladimir Llakaj (June 2018) and the street art collective Çeta and the political activist group Organizata Politike, which shares some of the same members as Çeta (2016 and 2018, respectively). Additional exchanges were conducted in 2016 with sculptor Arben Bajo and in 2017 with artist Pleurad Xhafa, via email.

13. On the challenges of defining communities in relation to works of art in public, see Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 138–55, and Grant H. Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Durham, NC, 2011), 171–99.

14. It bears mentioning that this article is primarily focused on representations of workers by artists and activists who—generally speaking—consider themselves to be “artists” more than “workers” (with the exception of the members of the street art collective Çeta, who do not hold unanimous perspectives on this identity). Parsing out the significance of these divergences in identity is a productive avenue for future investigations, given the recent focus on art as a mode of labor. See, for example, Angela Dimitrakaki and Kirsten Lloyd (eds.), Economy: Art, Production, and the Subject in the 21st Century (Liverpool, 2015).

15. Information on working-class conditions and identities in twenty-first-century Albania is lamentably lacking. For one of the few published engagements with the subject, see the Institute for Critique and Social Emancipation, Gjëndja e Klasës Punëtore në Shqipëri (I) (Tirana, 2016), and Gjëndja e Klasës Punëtore në Shqipëri (II) (Tirana, 2017), both available online at http://ikesh.org (accessed October 17, 2018).

16. Andrew Herod, “From Workers in the City to Workers’ Cities,” in The City is the Factory: New Solidarities and Spatial Strategies in an Urban Age, Miriam Greenberg and Penny Lewis (eds.) (Ithaca, NY, 2017), 199, 209.

17. For Lefebvre's discussion of spatial practice, representations of space, and spaces of representation, see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Donald Nicholson-Smith (trans.) (Cambridge, 1991), 33.

18. Herod, “Workers in the City,” 214–15.

19. Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism,’” Antipode 34:3 (2002): 351–53. For more on “actually existing neoliberalism” in the context of postsocialism, see Sonia Hirt, Christian Seller, and Craig Young, “Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation, and Purification in Post-Socialist Spaces,” Europe-Asia Studies 65:7 (2013): 1243–54 (and the other articles gathered in this special issue).

20. Kwon, One Place after Another, 138–45, 159.

21. Michael Gentile and Örjan Sjöberg point out one of the difficulties of discussing neoliberalism in the context of postsocialism: the term itself is rarely defined in the academic literature with any degree of specificity. The present article does not aim to advance such a definition, at least in any form that social science approaches might find satisfactory. It does, however, aim to look closely at the layers of socialist and postsocialist history inhering in particular sites, and in doing so, to avoid any straightforward explanation for neoliberalism (however construed) as the sole force determining the meaning of contemporary urban spaces in the former Socialist Bloc. Indeed, looking at public artworks and their complex meanings is one way to ensure that broad, systemic explanations can be avoided in analyses of urban change. See Gentile and Sjöberg, “Neoliberalism(s) as a Guide to Post-Wall Urban Change: Explanation Out of the Blue?” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (2019): 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12374 (accessed November 3, 2019).

22. Resmi Hoxha, Koha e Minierës: Memaliaj, 1949–2005 (Tirana, 2012), 23–28.

23. On Albania's globalization during the Cold War period, and on the effects of socialist skills exchange in the country, see Elidor Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Ithaca, NY, 2017).

24. As Lewis H. Siegelbaum argues, workers’ clubs and houses of culture were a key aspect of Soviet policies aimed at shaping the everyday life of industrial workers in socialist society. (See Siegelbaum, “The Shaping of Soviet Workers’ Leisure: Workers’ Clubs and Palaces of Culture in the 1930s,” International Labor and Working-Class History 56 (Fall, 1999): 78–92.) Socialist Albania, which drew significant influence from the Soviet model (especially in its Stalinist phase), likewise focused a great deal of attention to the leisure activities of workers in both rural and urban contexts. The wealth of activities available to workers in a relatively small settlement like Memaliaj evidences the distribution of such policies throughout the country.

25. Hoxha, Koha e Minierës, 23.

26. Albert Zholi, “Intervista: Flet inxhinieri i minierave, ish -drejtues i minierës së Memaliajt, Martin Cukalla,” Telegraf, January 12, 2014.

27. David Crowley and Susan E. Reid follow Katerina Clark in emphasizing the way that aspects of socialist life could easily take on associations that linked them simultaneously to the everyday and to the elevated realm of mythic significance. As Crowley and Reid point out, this allowed certain relatively minor spaces of socialist society to become imbued with greater significance through their association with the overarching narratives of socialist progress. Memaliaj, despite the importance of its material production for Albania's industrialization, remained a comparatively small site with marginal status compared to other urban centers. However, thanks to the place of miners and mining in socialist narratives of progress, the town did achieve a certain kind of mythic status during the socialist period. See Crowley and Reid (eds.), Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (New York, 2002), 7–8.

28. As Arlind Qori argues, “miners and oil workers are the withering traditional industrial working class of Albania.” Under socialism they functioned as some of the most iconic representatives of working-class organization in Albania, but they now constitute “a tiny minority” of the working class; workers in garment and footwear factories managed by transnational corporations now constitute the majority of working-class citizens. See Qori, “Scrap Mines, Call Centers and Hashish Plantations: The Grim Options Facing Albanian Workers,” LeftEast, October 16, 2018, http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/scrap-mines-call-centers-hashish-albanian-workers (accessed October 19, 2018).

29. “Memaliaj: Qyteti i të papunëve,” Vizion Plus, March 30, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-K2BEidxAg (accessed June 27, 2018).

30. “Minatori,” Drita, September 28, 1969.

31. On the role of commemorative sculpture in the dramatic transformation of public space that took place in Albania during the late 1960s and early 1970s, see Raino Isto, “Dynamisms of Time and Space: The Synthesis of Architecture and Monumental Sculpture in Socialist Albania's Martyrs’ Cemeteries,” Eesti Kunstimuuseumi Toimetised 11 (2016): 42–67. On the major monuments commissioned for this anniversary, see Enver Hoxha, “Vendim: Mbi Vendosjen e Disa Monumenteve, Busteve, dhe Përmendoreve me Rastin e 25-Vjetorit të Çlirimit të Atdheut,” Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives of Albania), f. 490, v. 1968, d. 568, fl. 6.

32. As in socialist Yugoslavia, the socialist Albanian government referred to the Second World War as the National Liberation War. Discourse about the war highlighted the continuity between the local Partisan forces who had fought against both Italian and German fascist forces, and the postwar rise of the Communist Party of Albania (led by Enver Hoxha). On the Second World War in Albania, see Bernd J. Fischer, Albania at War, 1939–1945 (West Lafayette, IN, 1999).

33. An overview of socialist Albanian artworks on the subject of the working classes—in sculpture, painting, and printmaking—can be found in Klasa Punëtore në Artet Figurative (Tirana, 1977).

34. Turkeshi, born in 1933, spent much of his career working with ceramics, including porcelain, maiolica, and terracotta. He studied sculpture at the Institute of Arts in Tirana, and went on to create an extensive body of work, often dealing with popular legends and folk characters. (Gjergj Frashëri, “Muharrem Turkeshi,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T086606.)

35. See the account of Turkeshi's interaction with citizens of the town in Edmond Ismailati, “Gani Gjosha, një hero i luftës dhe i punës,” Tirana Observer, December 3, 2014, http://www.tiranaobserver.al/gani-gjosha-nje-hero-i-luftes-dhe-i-punes/ (accessed June 21, 2018).

36. For an overview of the pyramid schemes and their sociopolitical significance, see Smoki Musaraj, “Tales from Albarado: The Materiality of Pyramid Schemes in Postsocialist Albania,” Cultural Anthropology 26:1 (2011): 84–110.

37. Fred C. Abrahams, Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe (New York, 2015), 169–221. Even those who had not lost money in the pyramid schemes took part in the looting in destruction of property. On this, see Preç Zogaj, Luftë Jocivile/ Uncivil War (Tirana, 1998), 18–19.

38. The project was officially launched in July of 2014. The first location renovated under the project's umbrella was one of the central plazas in the southeastern city of Korça, but the initial descriptions of the project note that seventy sites throughout the country were slated for renovation. See “Program kombëtare për rilindjen urbane” (press release), Kryeministria.al, July 19, 2014, https://kryeministria.al/newsroom/program-kombetar-per-rilindjen-urbane/ (accessed October 7, 2018). Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama explained that the program was necessary in order “to adapt [urban spaces] to the new model of life that we chose after the fall of the dictatorship.” Rama has strongly framed the project as a contrast to the policies of the previous government (led by Sali Berisha), which—Rama claims—did little to create necessary urban infrastructures or beautify urban spaces. See “Bisedë e Kryeministrit në rrjetet sociale” (press release), Kryeministria.al, August 30, 2016, https://www.kryeministria.al/ newsroom/bisede-e-kryeministrit-ne-rrjetet-sociale/ (accessed October 7, 2018).

39. Halili, “Pedonalja.” Halili succinctly summarizes the questions raised about the initial project by locals, which also included concerns about corruption and misuse of funds, lack of a clear timeline for the project, and the lack of green space in the new plan for the square. Perhaps most significantly, Halili notes that many of the protests against the project essentially viewed it as an attempt to erase the older generations (most of whom once worked in a capacity related to the coal mine) from the history of the town, creating a new space—without history—for younger generations. Halili writes that proponents of the plan centered on the war monument proposed that a memorial to the miners could instead be constructed on the site of the mine itself, to the northeast of Memaliaj. For more on the debate over the project, see Edmond Ismailati, “‘Triumfi’ i projektit skandaloz e abuziv për qendrën e Memaliajt.” Tirana Observer, August 29, 2016.

40. Vladimir Llakaj, in conversation with the author, June 30, 2018. The interview was conducted in Albanian.

41. Meunier—a contemporary of Rodin—is known for his sculptures of both agrarian and industrial workers, including several works depicting miners. Meunier's style was influential on the development of subsequent realist sculpture, including Socialist Realism. For an overview of Meunier's work, see Christian Brinton, Constantin Meunier (Pittsburgh, PA, 1913). On Meunier's project for a monument to labor, see Sura Levine, “Constantin Meunier's Monument to Labor at the 1909 Meunier Exhibition at Leuven,” in Constantin Meunier: A Dialogue with Allan Sekula, ed. Hilde van Gelder (Leuven, 2005), 11–17. On the influence of Meunier's monumentalization of labor in another context, the American one, see Melissa Dabakis, Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture: Monuments, Manliness and the Work Ethic, 1880–1935 (New York, 1999), 105–26.

42. Llakaj, in conversation with the author, June 30, 2018. Ironically, this attitude toward art's meaning is congruent with Socialist Realism, which proclaimed the need for art to leave behind outdated modes of representation (such as classicism or naturalism) and discover new, appropriate means of speaking directly to the people. This is why Socialist Realism was described as a “historically open aesthetic system,” insofar as it theoretically left room for infinite evolution according to popular tastes and historical situations. See Thomas Lahusen, “Socialist Realism in Search of Its Shores: Some Remarks on the ‘Historically Open Aesthetic System of the Truthful Representation of Life,’” in Socialist Realism without Shores, Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko (ed.) (Durham, NC, 1997), 5–26.

43. Llakaj, in conversation with the author, June 30, 2018.

44. The first version of Llakaj's statue stood on a much lower and broader pedestal, but—perhaps in an attempt to increase the visual weight of the statue in relation to the new square—the second version was installed on a higher, narrower plinth. The latter statue has a small bronze base that is larger than the surface of the pedestal upon which it was placed, leaving slightly overhanging sections that indeed make the statue look as if it were hastily installed, without proper planning. The increased height of the second version also has the effect of forcing the viewer to look up at the statue (more so than in its previous iteration), creating a symbolic physical hierarchy between contemporary viewer and the miner as an icon of the town's past.

45. Of the ten residents interviewed by the author, all five who had formerly worked in the mine expressed that they felt the money spent on the new square was unfair to former miners, either because it spent money that should have gone to support those workers (see the discussion below on the protest for a special legal status for miners in Memaliaj), or because they found the square “ugly” in some way.

46. Ismailati, “‘Triumfi’ i projektit skandaloz.”

47. Most of the aesthetic issues raised by citizens of the town related to unrealistic details of the statue. For example, two informants interviewed noted that the type of jackhammer held by Llakaj's miner is the type used for work in the street, breaking asphalt or concrete, but is different from the kind used by miners underground. They recalled that Turkeshi's statue was accurate in this regard. Another two informants cited the “fake” or “awkward” pose of Llakaj's final statue. A total of five informants referred to the project as a whole as “just for show” or “a distraction.” See author's fieldnotes, July 2018.

48. See “Në mbështetje të protestës në Tiranë, minatorët e Memaliajt: Duam statusin.” BalkanWeb, June 13, 2018, http://www.balkanweb.com/site/ne-mbeshtetje-te-protestes-ne-tirane-minatoret-e-memaliajt-duam-statusin/, and “Minatorët në protestë, kërkojnë miratimin e statusit,” Top Channel, June 13, 2018, http://top-channel.tv/2018/06/13/minatoret-ne-proteste-kerkojne-miratimin-e-statusit/ (accessed June 27, 2018). News reports do not record the exact number of protesters, but footage shows between twenty and thirty people participating at one point in the event.

49. See, for example, Sasha Tsenkova and Zorica Nedović-Budić (eds.), The Urban Mosaic of Post-socialist Europe: Space, Institutions and Policy (Heidelberg, 2006); Kiril Stanilov (ed.), The Post-socialist City: Urban Form and Space Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe after Socialism (Dordrecht, 2007); Alison Stenning, Adrian Smith, Alena Rochovská, and Dariusz Świątek, Domesticating Neo-liberalism: Spaces of Economic Practice and Social Reproduction in Post-socialist Cities (Malden, 2010); Zoran Poposki, “Spaces of Democracy: Art, Politics, and Artivism in the Post-socialist City,” Studia Politica: Romanian Political Science Review 11:4 (2011): 713–23; and Alexander Kalyukin, Thomas Borén, and Andrew Byerley, “The Second Generation of Post-socialist Change: Gorky Park and Public Space in Moscow,” Urban Geography 36:5 (2015): 674–95.

50. Blendi Kajsiu, A Discourse Analysis of Corruption: Instituting Neoliberalism against Corruption in Albania, 1998–2005 (Burlington, 2014), 101–27.

51. For an overview of the end of socialism in Albania and the country's first democratic elections, see Miranda Vickers and James Pettifer, Albania: From Anarchy to Balkan Identity (New York, 1997), 33–74.

52. Wendy Brown describes the pervasiveness of neoliberalism's transformation of citizen subjectivities in Brown, “Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy,” Theory & Event 7:1 (2003), https://muse.jhu.edu/ article/48659 (accessed October 9, 2018). Brown suggests that neoliberalism is marked by the “disseminati[on of] market values to all institutions and social action.” In terms of space, this means that not only do new spaces appear to accommodate changes in market structures under neoliberalism, but new ways of comporting oneself within those spaces are also mandated by neoliberal ideology.

53. Gregory Andrusz, “Wall and Mall: A Metaphor for Metamorphosis,” in The Urban Mosaic of Post-socialist Europe, ed. Tsenkova and Nedović-Budić, 83–85.

54. Anna Zhelnina, “‘Здесь как музей’: торговый центр как общественное пространство,” Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research 3:2 (2011): 48–69.

55. For descriptions of the project, see Edi Muka, “Re-inventing the Wheel” in Promises of the Past: A Discontinuous History of Art in Former Eastern Europe, ed. Christina Macel and Joanna Mytkowska (Paris, 2010), 172–79, and Edi Muka and Gëzim Qëndro, Tirana Biennale 2 (Thessaloniki, 2003), 59–71.

56. On the politics of Rama's transformation of urban space in relation to prior projects of architectural monumentality in Tirana, see Romeo Kodra, “Architectural Monumentalism in Transitional Albania,” Studia Ethnologica Croatica 29 (2017): 210–17.

57. Svetlana Boym, “Modernities Out of Sync: The Tactful Art of Anri Sala,” ARTMargins Online, February 24, 2005, http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/svetlana-boym/177-modernities-out-of-sync-the-tactful-art-of-anri-sala (accessed October 9, 2018). Boym's reading of Rama's painted buildings emphasizes its relationship to democratization, but does not consider the way it also continued certain authoritarian aspects of centralized urban planning from the socialist period. She interprets Rama's interventions solely as responses again socialist monumentality and urban form, rather than as continuations of them by different means, and in this sense her analysis misses an opportunity to fully grasp the “postsocialist” character of Rama's façade-painting project.

58. Rama has recently come under criticism as prime minister of Albania for continuing to project an image of himself as an artist concerned with fostering democracy while he pursues an essentially authoritarian form of neoliberal politics. See Vincent WJ van Gerven Oei, “Give Me the Colors…and the Country: Albanian Propaganda in the 21^st Century,” Art Papers (March/April, 2016), http://www.artpapers.org/feature_articles/2016_0304-Albania.html, and Jonida Gashi, “These Are (Not) the Things We Are Fighting For,” Reporter, November 29, 2015, www.reporter.al/these-are-not-the-things-we-are-fighting-for (accessed October 10, 2018). Van Gerven Oei also takes issue with Boym's oversimplified discussion of Rama's project.

59. Arben Bajo, email communication with the author, April 1, 2016. The communication was conducted in Albanian.

60. The naturalism of the figures is enhanced by the fact that they sometimes step slightly over the edge of the scaffolding. This reduces the role of the scaffolding as “pedestal,” suggesting that the workers depicted really occupy the same space as viewers.

61. Bajo, email communication with the author, April 1, 2016.

62. On the representation of production in Socialist Realist art in Albania, see Raino Isto, “Sali Shijaku's Zëri i Masës and the Metaphysics of Representation in Albanian Socialist Realist Painting,” in Workers Leaving the Studio, Looking Away from Socialist Realism, Vincent WJ van Gerven Oei and Mihnea Mircan (eds.) (New York, 2015), 25–39.

63. Evgeny Dobrenko, Political Economy of Socialist Realism, Jesse M. Savage (trans.) (New Haven, CT, 2007), xviii.

64. Of course, Socialist Realism did not depict “lazy” workers as a type, and in this aspect Bajo's sculpture differentiates itself markedly from the tropes of the style.

65. Often the trio represented comprised a male soldier, a male industrial worker, and a female agricultural worker, or an older male worker with one younger male worker and one younger female worker. In Albanian socialist sculpture, some key examples of this compositional trope include the middle register of the monumental relief on the façade of the prime minister's building in Tirana (by Kristaq Rama, Muntas Dhrami, Shaban Hadëri, and Hektor Dule, 1974), the Monument to Agrarian Reform in Krutja (by Kristaq Rama, 1966), the Monument to the Provocations of August 2, 1949 in Bilisht (by Janaq Paço and Uran Hajdari, 1969), and the monument Our Land in Lushnja (by Perikli Çuli, 1980s). These tripartite tableaus were sometimes references to European religious scenes, as in the case of Odhise Paskali's Comrades in Përmet (1964). See Gëzim Qëndro, “The Thanatology of Hope,” in Lapidari, Vincent WJ van Gerven Oei (ed.) (New York, 2015), 61–68.

66. For an extensively illustrated overview of monumental sculpture in socialist Albania, see Kujtim Buza, Kleanth Dedi, and Dhimitraq Trebicka, Përmendore të Heroizmit Shqiptar (Tirana: Shtëpia Qëndrore e Ushtrisë Popullore, 1973).

67. Bajo, email communication with the author, April 1, 2016.

68. Ibid.

69. Perhaps the most immediate comparison suggests itself between Bajo's Workers and Segal's The Steelmakers (1980), realized first a as a plaster sculpture and then as a bronze public commission in Youngstown, Ohio. However, given the mall as a context, some of Segal's sculptures featuring service industry workers (The Diner of 1964–1966 or The Dry-Cleaning Store of 1964) also seem to be important precedents for Bajo's work.

70. On the significance of the agency of Segal's models in his artistic process, see Brenda Schmahmann, “Cast in a Different Light: Women and the “Artist's Studio” Theme in George Segal's Sculpture,” Women's Art Journal 20:2 (Autumn 1999–Winter 2000): 33, 36.

71. While Segal's work is related to photography's indexical aspect, he himself did not rely on photography to produce naturalistic poses, but on the knowledge he gained through working with models. See Jan Van der Marck, George Segal (New York, 1975), 31.

72. One could compare Workers to certain works by painter Edi Hila that thematize the production of propaganda for public space, such as Slogan Production or Party Preparations (both of 1988). On Hila's series of works dedicated to the creation of propaganda, see Edi Hila, “Paradoxical Realism,” in Edi Hila: Painter of Transformation (Warsaw, 2018), 45–47.

73. Phyllis Tuchman, George Segal (New York, 1983), 92.

74. Carrie Ann Morgan, unpublished paper on Albanian coffee culture. I owe my understanding of the significance of cafès in Tirana, and their paradoxical associations with both modernity and the Ottoman “backwards” past to Morgan's analysis. For a discussion of the way that Albanian discourses have framed the Ottomans (and aspects of Ottoman culture that persist in Albania as “other,” see Enis Sustalrova, Arratisje nga Lindja: Orientalizmi Shqiptar nga Naimi te Kadareja (Tirana: Dudaj, 2006).

75. The problems with both the historical and the critical strands of Fried's absorption/theatricality model have been discussed at length, and I do not wish to recapitulate these debates here. Nor do I aim to attempt to validate Fried's application of this duality to more recent art. Without attempting to evaluate Workers according to Fried's criteria, it is still useful to understand how the actions of the laborers in the sculpture do or do not appear to acknowledge their viewers, and how this relationship shapes the spatial experience of the shopping center around them. On the continued applicability of Fried's dichotomy for chronologically later forms of Realism and naturalism, see Marnin Young, “The Motionless Look of a Painting: Jules Bastien-Lepage, Les Foins, and the End of Realism,” Art History 37:1 (February, 2014), 41–42.

76. Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and the Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Los Angeles, 1980), 66.

77. Although Fried took aim at Minimalist (what he called “literalist”) art in his famous 1967 essay “Art and Objecthood,” Jan Van der Marck has pointed out that many of Fried's points about the works of Donald Judd or Robert Morris could as easily describe George Segal's work. Van der Marck does not, of course, share Fried's negative interpretation of the label “theatericality.” See Van der Marck, George Segal, 49–51, and Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” in Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago, 1998), 148–72.

78. Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” 153.

79. Ibid., 154–55.

80. On the contrasts between the timelessness of absorption and the frozen quality of “photographically” captured action, see Young, “The Motionless Look,” 63–64.

81. The whiteness of the sculpture also sterilizes its depiction of the workers, making the sensory consumption of labor more palatable for visitors who encounter the sculpture as consumers of the space within the shopping center.

82. I refer to the works discussed here as “interventions,” following Miwon Kwon's discussion of the distinction between “integration” (which seeks to “assimilate” the work of art with its urban, architectural environment) and “intervention” (which retains a marked contrast between the work of art, its aesthetics or function, and its urban surroundings. See Kwon, One Thing After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 72–73.

83. One example of such work is the TRUTHTAG project of Polish artist Kristian Czapliscki (who goes by the moniker TRUTH). For a discussion of Czaplicki's TRUTHTAGs, which resemble miniature works of utopian geometric modernist sculpture attached to buildings in postsocialist Poland, see Cynthia Imogen Hammond, “Urban ‘Truths,’” in The Post-socialist City: Continuity and Change in Urban Space and Imagery, Alfrun Kliems and Marina Dmitrieva (eds.) (Berlin, 2010), 68–85.

84. Enisa Cenaliaj, email communication with the author, July 15, 2016.

85. On the history of the Kombinat neighborhood, see Luigi Za, Kombinat: Storia e Vita Quotidiana di un Quartiere Simbolo di Tirana (Nardò, 2012).

86. Qtd. in “Në një ‘Statujë’ të Gjallë Postkomuniste,” Metropol, March 5, 2005. The ensuing quotation from Cenaliaj is taken from the same source.

87. This relationship is evident in Abdurrahim Buza's 1949 painting Volunteer Work in the Stalin Textile Factory, which shows work being completed on the plaza in front of the factory and indeed on the pedestal itself. Beneath Stalin's welcoming gesture (which simultaneously serves as a gesture towards the future) labors a sea of men, women, and children, some dressed as urban residents and others in costume that marks them clearly as hailing from more remote regions of the country. Buza's painting in many ways epitomizes the relationship between the working masses and the monument: The monument becomes a concrete symbol that expresses the collective ideals for which the workers below are presumably united, and thus expresses a dialectical collective unity of those masses. Ardian Vehbiu explores the relationship between the discursive categories of “the people,” “the masses,” and “the individual” in socialist Albania in “Populli, Masat, Individi,” Peizazhe të Fjalës, August 29, 2016, https://peizazhe.com/2016/08/29/populli-masat-individi/ (accessed October 14, 2018).

88. Reuben Fowkes provides a succinct overview of the postsocialist conditions of such monumental statues in Fowkes, “You Only Live Twice: The Strange Afterlife of Socialist Sculpture,” in Bucharest: Matter & History: The Public Monument and Its Discontents, Anca Benera (ed.) (Bucharest, 2010), 213–33.

89. Amy Bryzgel, Performance Art in Eastern Europe since 1960 (Manchester, 2017), 131–33.

90. On Çeta's history, see Raino Isto, “The Politics of Street Art in Albania: An Interview with Çeta,” ARTMargins Online, October 4, 2016, http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/interviews-sp-837925570/782-the-poli… (accessed October 15, 2018).

91. The term (often transliterated as cheta) exists in a number of languages in Southeastern Europe, and chetas existed in the territories of the current states of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, and Albania during the late Ottoman period. Their activities were usually anti-Ottoman, and they were frequently considered freedom fighters and folk heroes by post-Ottoman regimes. In Albania, the term cheta was also used to describe Partisan guerilla units during the Second World War.

92. The members of Çeta have often worked in concert with other activist organizations based in Tirana, such as Organizata Politike (a leftist organization focused on generating worker solidarity, advocating workers’ rights, and organizing worker protests) and Lëvizja për Universitetin (the Movement for the University, a student group advocating student rights and affordable university education).

93. Lorin Kadiu, “‘Çeta’ vendos Mic Sokolin përpara buldozerëve tek ‘Bregu i Lumit’,” Historia Ime, August 1, 2016, http://historia-ime.com/2016/08/01/ceta-vendos-mic-sokolin-perpara-buldozereve-tek-bregu-i-lumit/ (accessed October 16, 2018).

94. The story of Ardit Gjoklaj's death—including interviews with his family and other workers in the Sharra landfill, is documented in an investigative report entitled Kodrina e Vdekjes (The Hill of Death), produced by the Públicus reporting group, October 11, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VPF2ZWpX2w. The feature was originally produced for broadcast on the major news portal Vizion Plus, but the company declined to air it after viewing the content. The documentary was shown publicly in full as part of the recent ongoing protests in front on the National Theater in Tirana, in the summer of 2018. On the censorship of the program, see Armand Mero, “Dokumentari për Sharrën hidhet në YouTube,” Zëri i Amerikës/Voice of America, October 12, 2016, https://www.zeriamerikes.com/a/3547658.html (accessed October 14, 2018).

95. The Tirana regional court found both the driver of the excavator and the shift manager on duty when Gjoklaj was killed not guilty. Erald Deliu, “Vdekja e Ardit Gjoklajt në Sharrë, Gjykata jep pafajësi për dy të akuzuarit,” Panorama Online, April 20, 2018, http://www.panorama.com.al/vdekja-e-ardit-gjoklajt-ne-sharre-gjykata-jep-pafajesi-per-2-te-akuzuarit/ (accessed October 14, 2018).

96. The proliferation of public-private partnerships is a common element of neoliberal urban reform. See Brenner and Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies,” 367–72.

97. Gjergj Erebara, “Mayor Accused of Censoring Albania TV Report,” Balkan Insight, October 10, 2016, http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/albania-s-capital-mayor-accused-of-censoring-tv-show-10-10-2016 (accessed October 14, 2018).

98. Dongyao Nie, “Alida Tota: How I Conduct Investigative Reporting under Censorship in Albania,” RoosterGNN, January 25, 2018, https://rgnn.org/2018/01/25/alida-tota-conduct-investigative-reporting-censorship-albania/ (accessed October 11, 2018).

99. “Ardit Gjoklaj's Death Continues to Haunt Veliaj,” Exit, November 2, 2016, https://exit.al/en/2016/11/02/ardit-gjoklajs-death-continues-to-haunt-veliaj/ (accessed October 16, 2018).

100. Other recent interventions in public space in Albania have likewise focused on the practice of naming postsocialism's dead, in order to draw attention to capitalism's deadly effects in the country. For example, Organizata Politike has carried out several projects aimed as commemorating workers who have died on the job in Albania since the end of socialism. In one action, on May 1, 2017, the group publicly displayed a banner entitled Heronj të Punës Kapitaliste (Heroes of Capitalist Labor, a transformation of the phrase “the heroes of socialist labor”) on the gate of the Ministry of Public Welfare and Youth, listing two hundred workers whose deaths occurred on the job. In a statement associated with the action, the group declared, “From today forward, their names will no longer be anonymous. Their names have begun to be etched upon the social conscience of this country.” Organizata Politike carried out an associated action in which they spray painted the names of the workers in groups of four on the walls of Tirana, along with the phrase “Dead on the job: 4 out of 200+.” Organizata Politike, interview with the author, July 27, 2018.

On projects of postsocialist commemoration in Albania in general, see Kailey Rocker, “Seizing a Community's Consciousness: Mobilizing Memorials for Change in the Wake of (Post)Socialism,” paper presented at Beyond the Grave: A Symposium on the Politics of Dead Bodies in (Post)Socialist Albania, Zeta Gallery, Tirana, August 3, 2018.

101. Skanderbeg Square—named for Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg—is the capital city's main square, and has been the focus of renovations by each political regime in control of Albania since it was first designed by Italian architects in the interwar period. On the history of square's development through the periods of Italian and socialist control, see Gusti, Maria Adriana, Albania: Architettura e Città, 1925–1943 (Florence: Maschietto, 2006), 19–35Google Scholar, and Bleta, Indrit, Influences of Political Regime Shifts on the Urban Environment of a Capital City, Case Study: Tirana (Master's Thesis, Middle Eastern Technical University, 2010)Google Scholar.

102. On 51n4e's involvement in Albanian urban renovation projects and the Skanderbeg Square project in particular, see Vincent WJ van Gerven Oei, “Urban Politics: The Unofficial View of Tirana 87,” Berfrois, February 17, 2015, https://www.berfrois.com/2015/02/vincent-w-j-van-gerven-oei-urban-politics/ (accessed October 16, 2018).

103. The Skanderbeg Square project is exhaustively photographically documented in 51N4E: Skanderbeg Square, Tirana (Berlin, 2017).

104. The controversy over Tirana mayor Erion Veliaj's role in silencing discussion of Gjoklaj's death became more heated when the mayor was later photographed with the prosecutor in the case. When Fusha Ltd., owned by the prosecutor's relative, won the bid for the renovation of Skanderbeg Square, some saw this as evidence of corruption. See Lindita Çela, “Vdekja e Ardit Gjoklajt: Gjykata Akuza Prokurorisë për Hetime ‘Selektive,” Reporter, May 17, 2018, https://www.reporter.al/vdekja-e-ardit-gjoklajt-gjykata-akuza-prokurorise-per-hetime-selektive/ (accessed October 16, 2018), and “Akuza e Rëndë e PD: Rama, Fusha shpk dhe Mafia Pastrojnë Paratë,” Koha Jonë, July 18, 2018.

105. See Raino Isto and Pleurad Xhafa, “Arti Bashkëkohor në Hapësirën Publike,” Peizazhe të Fjalës, January 21, 2017, https://peizazhe.com/2017/01/21/arti-bashkekohor-ne-hapesiren-publike/ (accessed October 16, 2018).

106. Many of Xhafa's works—including the untitled inscription of Gjoklaj's name, Monument to Failure (2016), and Negative I-II-III-IV (2015)—are importantly related to the form of the counter-monument, as described by James E. Young. Counter-monuments both invert the apparent longevity of the traditional monument through marked ephemerality, and emphasize the need for memory work to be done by their audiences (whereas traditional monuments more often appear to perform memory work on our behalf). Especially in these aspects, Xhafa's work about Gjoklaj functions precisely as a counter-monument. See Young, “The Counter-monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today,” Critical Inquiry 18:2 (Winter, 1992): 267–96.

107. Xhafa carried out his intervention as part of a series of artistic engagements with the square organized by the Debatik Center of Contemporary Art, a group of artists, historians, and others who attempt to mobilize contemporary art as a tool to criticize contemporary Albanian politics. See the center's website, https://debatikcenter.net (accessed October 17, 2018).

108. The link between the new project for the square and Albanian nationalism is explicit: the publicity for the new square made clear that the stones used to create the tiles were quarried from “Albanian territories,” including regions in Kosovo and Greece. Thus, the square itself embodies the notion of “Greater Albania,” a region extending beyond the boundaries of the current Albanian nation-state, including parts of Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo.

109. The tradition of presenting Christ as a worker is an old one, dating back to Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum novarum, issued in 1891, which focused in particular on the conditions of the urban poor and the need for the Catholic Church to mitigate conflict between social classes. The image of Christ as a worker became an important motif for the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists (an organization that was deeply committed to anticommunist principles). I thank the anonymous reviewer for bringing this connection to my attention. Given the religious associations of Çeta's image (which adapts them in order to repurpose them to communist ends), it is also worth noting the resemblance that the work bears to earlier Socialist Realist images in Albania that were themselves modeled on Christian artistic paradigms, such as Odhise Paskali's sculpture Comrades in Përmet. See Qëndro, “Thanatology of Hope,” 61–68.

110. Çeta, Rënia dhe Ringjallja (artist statement), April 8, 2018. The text was written in Albanian; this is the author's translation.

111. The difficulties of working class representation in Albanian public spaces relate more broadly to the issue of state socialist heritage, and its conditions of possibility in the present. On this, see Francesco Iacono, “Revolution and Counter-revolution; Or Why It Is Difficult to Have a Heritage of Communism and What Can We Do About It,” International Journal of Heritage Studies (May, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13527258.2018.1450280 (accessed October 17, 2018).

112. Albert Pope, Ladders, 2nd ed. (New York, 2014), 232.