The Icons of Opium exhibition, hosted at Kalo Gallery from April 4 to 11, 2025, presented a critical visual archive of anti religious propaganda produced under Albania’s communist regime between 1946 and 1967. Curated by Doan Dani and Lauresha Basha, the exhibition assembled archival posters, satirical cartoons, and state periodicals that formed part of a systematic ideological campaign aimed at delegitimizing religion prior to and following the formal prohibition of religious practice.
The works on display demonstrate how faith was portrayed as a mechanism of corruption and social control. Believers were routinely caricatured as intellectually deficient, blind followers manipulated by clerical authority, and obstacles to socialist progress. These visual tropes were not incidental artistic expressions; they were components of a coordinated propaganda apparatus designed to erode the moral and social credibility of religious communities before the state imposed its total religious ban.
Spanning material from the immediate post war period beginning in 1945 through the consolidation of the ban in 1967, the exhibition traced the gradual intensification of anti religious rhetoric. The iconography reveals clear transnational influences, particularly from the visual languages of Soviet and Chinese communist propaganda, which similarly framed religion as superstition, backwardness, and ideological deviation. Stylized depictions of clergy as parasitic figures, exaggerated imagery of ritual as irrational spectacle, and slogans equating faith with ignorance demonstrate a shared aesthetic and ideological grammar across these regimes.
The materials were retrieved through the dedicated archival research of Doan Dani, research fellow at the University of Montreal, with the support of Elton Hatibi, resident fellow at the Konak Institute. Their work ensured that these artifacts, once instruments of repression, could be recontextualized as historical evidence rather than instruments of erasure.
By foregrounding these images in a public forum, Icons of Opium invited reflection on collective memory, repression, and resilience. The exhibition did not merely display propaganda; it examined the mechanisms by which a state sought to delegitimize faith, reshape cultural consciousness, and redefine moral authority. In doing so, it opened space for a renewed conversation about the endurance of religious life in Albania despite sustained attempts at ideological eradication, and it received significant national media coverage while prompting broad cultural commentary.