A typographic sculpture connecting the two sides of Tirana’s Lana River, reading “Enough Is Enough” was installed on Thursday in the city center.
Authored by Kosovo artist Alban Muja, the sculpture is cast in metal, and it commemorates U.S. President George W. Bush’s call for Kosovo’s independence during his visit to Albanian in June 2007, several months prior to Kosovo Parliament’s decision to actually declare the country’s independence on February 17, 2008.
“At some point in time, sooner rather than later, you’ve got to say enough is enough, Kosovo is independent,” President Bush told a news conference in the first visit by a U.S. president to Albania.
The installation is 17.5 meters long and 1.8 meters high. It will be inaugurated on Friday, in an event organized by Harabel Contemporary Art Platform.
It comes in celebration of the 30th anniversary of reestablishment of diplomatic ties between Albania and the United States.
The two countries established relations right after Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. The country’s invasion by Italy and later Germany during WWII brought the cutting of ties. The communist regime installed in Albania never reestablished ties with the US, all the while considering it one of its major enemies.
Diplomatic relations were reestablished only in 1991, with the crumbling of the communist regime. The visit of US Secretary of State James Baker in 1991 marked an historic moment for modern Albania, a sign of its final cutting of ties with communism. An estimated 300,000 people poured into the streets to greet Baker, roughly 10 percent of the whole population.
The riddance from the dictatorship brought common Albanians on both sides of the border closer, at a time where oppression by the Yugoslavian and later Serbian regime on Kosovo Albanians had started to take the toll that would later bring to atrocities against Albanians in Kosovo, which would eventually push Western democracies to intervene and stop the geocidal Serbian regime. For nearly half a century the communist regime had kept Albanians in Albania and Kosovo completely separate in virtually all aspects.
Albania opened its gates during the Kosovo War in 1998-1999, welcoming hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their home at gunpoint.
The United States under President Bill Clinton was the main push behind the NATO-led initiative to get the Serbian army out of Kosovo in 1999.
President George W. Bush’s visit to Tirana in 2007 foretold the independence of Kosovo, which was declared a few months later. The US was the first country to recognize Kosovo.
Bringing the two sides of the river, the “Enough Is Enough” sculpture authored by a Kosovo Albanian captures this triangle of relations between the US and Albanians in Kosovo and Albania on this 30th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic ties between Tirana and Washington.
