By Helidon Haliti
In the former Albania, when poetry could cost you your freedom, Mimoza Ahmeti was among those creative women who walked the delicate line between courage and condemnation. An avant-garde in a system that was allergic to any form of avant-garde, she managed to escape what for many others was inevitable: “re-education.”
Because at that time, poetry was not just poetry. It was criminal evidence. And the list of those “re-educated” is long: Faslli Haliti in the socialist village, Visar Zhiti in prison, Edi Hila in the chicken coop—an alternative gallery where chickens were less critical than ideological committees. Meanwhile, another figure who would later take the public stage, Edi Rama, was experimenting with colors and his characteristic noise.
In this climate, Mimoza came across as a strong scent of the city—not just the city, but the capital. Her poetry had perfume, nerve, and a good dose of self-confidence that, at the time, was almost an act of rebellion.
But history, as is known, has a sense of humor that often surpasses even poets.
Because today, in 2026, we find Mimoza not in a literary salon, but in a television format: "VIP Farm". A displacement that is not simply geographical, but almost philosophical. From the metropolis to the stable. From metaphor to dung.
What once escaped socialist “re-education” seems today to have willingly embraced a new version of it—this time not from the state, but from the market. Because if once the system sent you to the countryside as a punishment, today television does the same thing… as a privilege.
And Mimoza fits.
Mimosa, who once elegantly avoided any scent that wasn't the metaphorical Chanel, now enters into a direct relationship with the scents of the farm. She even reinterprets them. In a poetic twist that even socialist realism would envy, she manages to compare luxury deodorant to the scent of manure—elevating the latter to the status of a rural pearl.
This is no longer just poetry. It is a new aesthetic form: critical neo-abstraction.
From “Mimoza llastica” to “Mimoza me poza,” the transformation is complete. She poses with the cow with an almost existential seriousness, defends the donkey as a trampled figure of the system, and sings—with a tonal freedom that challenges any music conservative.
And of course, there's the climax: the closeness to the goat. A symbol that, in another exhibition, could be a metaphor. Here, it's a stage partner.
Paradoxically, what the dictatorship failed to fully accomplish—reducing the poet to rural reality—is being accomplished today by spectacular democracy, with LED lighting and a massive audience.
Because in the end, perhaps this is the greatest victory of capitalism: it doesn't force you to go to the farm... it makes you go yourself, with a contract and a fee.
And Mimoza goes. Not as a condemned woman. But as a protagonist.
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Helidon Haliti
Painter / Visual Artist
Professor at the University of Arts, Tirana
