Ornela Vorpsi

Ornela Vorpsi born on August 3, 1968 in Tirana, is an Albanian prose author, fine artist, video artist and photographer.

She studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and has lived and worked in Paris since 1997. In 2012 she was named one of the 35 best writers in Europe in Aleksander Hemon and Zadie Smith's Best European Fiction.

Her literary debut - the novel "Le pays où l'on ne meurt jamais" (A country where you never die) was first published in the Italian language. The book has been awarded several prestigious Italian literary awards, including Grinzane Cavour and the Viareggio Prize. Later novels of hers appeared in French or Italian. Titled album "Nothing obvious", released in 2001 Zurich contains the set of facts creating an erotic self-portrait of the author. Beauty and desire are also the main themes in the work of the writer, who does not avoid drastic criticism of Albanian society and Albania, where she grew up.

Ornela Vorpsi's first publication appeared as early as 2001: the volume of photos "Nothing obvious", in which she shows femininity as something uncertain, damaged and fragmentary. Intimate snapshots and details of the female body, fluid and blurred: a white female body before a red background, hands that are holding a cup with bright-red painted fingernails, the silhouette of a woman before a rumpled bed.