I discovered Matilda Odobashi’s artwork during a recent trip to Tirana, where I was invited by the NLS-Initiative Albania. A well-known artist in Albania, Matilda is an active member of the psychoanalytic group in Tirana.

During a visit to her studio, she showed us the work from her latest exhibition, which bore the title, like a witz, ​‘F Am I a liar’. An empty house plan, reimagined family photos, collages, figures of children who are far from angelic… are all diverse elements of her artistic work. Inspired by her family history, which she presents as a fictional truth marked by loss, Matilda uses her art to create a fiction that makes space for what eludes representation.

Marina Frangiadaki

Here is what she says about her exhibition:

“… What triggered this whole idea of an unknown familiarity (F  AM  I  LIAR) was the emigration of my parents and my little brother, in the USA in 2016. The idea of the house shifted for me into something strange; the house I was born into and raised turned somehow soulless. This feeling grew even stronger with the loss of my grandmother in November of 2024, living alone at that house after my family emigrated. The absence created by her loss, which initially felt impossible to articulate, found a subtle form within the works. I realised that grief does not always demand dramatic representation; sometimes it exists in small details — in textures, in empty spaces, in the way light touches an old photograph. Through this exhibition, I realised that remembering is not only about preserving what was, but also about creating and accepting how memories transformed. Home, family, and childhood are not fixed entities; they are created by ideas and dreams that shift, dissolve, and reassemble in new forms within us.”

Matilda Odobashi, 2026