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Albanian Artist Offers ‘Therapy’ with Portraits Painted in Coffee

Kryemadhi uses coffee like watercolour paints, composing portraits with a rich, brown patina -- adding water to create different shades Gent SHKULLAKU AFP
Kryemadhi uses coffee like watercolour paints, composing portraits with a rich, brown patina -- adding water to create different shades Gent SHKULLAKU AFP
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Albanian Artist Offers ‘Therapy’ with Portraits Painted in Coffee

Kryemadhi uses coffee like watercolour paints, composing portraits with a rich, brown patina -- adding water to create different shades Gent SHKULLAKU AFP
Kryemadhi uses coffee like watercolour paints, composing portraits with a rich, brown patina -- adding water to create different shades Gent SHKULLAKU AFP

Albanian artist David Kryemadhi douses his brush with coffee and carefully sketches the face of a cafe customer, hoping the offer of a free portrait will bring cheer amid the anxiety of the pandemic.

Many Albanians regard cafes as a vital institution and punctuate most days with caffeinated outings -- the country of 2.8 million reputedly has one of the highest numbers of cafes in the world per head of population.

"Art and coffee help a lot of people," Kryemadhi told AFP in the seaside city of Durres.

"The moment of calm and reflection while painting a portrait helps the other person gain self-confidence and see the world with a positive synergy, a more open eye."

Kryemadhi uses coffee like watercolor paints, composing portraits with a rich, brown patina -- adding water to create different shades.

In the cafes of Albania, he has found a natural setting for his brand of art therapy.

To find subjects to paint, he strikes up conversations with customers before offering a free portrait.

"It did me so much good," said student Alexsandra while waiting for her portrait to dry.

"I find in this painting all my emotions, my torments, my thoughts."

Eva Allushi from the University of Durres explains that cafes in Albania are "an essential form of social life" where people feel free to express themselves.

"The novelty in David's art is the fact that he builds bridges with his fellow travellers in this Albanian institution," she said.

According to Albania's Institute of Statistics, the country has roughly 600 cafes per 100,000 people -- one of the highest in the world.

Kryemadhi said he hoped his portraits would help alleviate some of the stress caused by coronavirus in Durres, an area still recovering from a devastating earthquake in 2019 that killed dozens and left thousands more homeless.

"Coffee art is one of the most successful therapies," said Kryemadhi.

"It helps to overcome difficult situations such as those experienced with this pandemic or with the earthquake."

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Varieties

Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

Top minds at the world's largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could vastly improve research into the remaining enigmas of physics.

The plans for the Future Circular Collider — a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and below Lake Geneva — published late Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The FCC would carry out high-precision experiments in the mid-2040s to study “known physics” in greater detail, then enter a second phase — planned for 2070 — that would conduct high-energy collisions of protons and heavy ions that would “open the door to the unknown,” said Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, The AP news reported.

“History of physics tells that when there is more data, the human ingenuity is able to extract more information than originally expected,” Chiarelli, who was not involved in the plans, said in an e-mail.

For roughly a decade, top minds at CERN have been making plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground tunnel and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.

“Ultimately what we would like to do is a collider which will come up with 10 times more energy than what we have today,” said Arnaud Marsollier, a CERN spokesman. “When you have more energy, then you can create particles that are heavier.”

The blueprint lays out the proposed path, environmental impact, scientific ambitions and project cost. Independent experts will take a look before CERN's two dozen member countries decide in 2028 whether to go forward, starting in the mid-2040s at a cost of some 14 billion Swiss francs (about $16 billion).

CERN officials tout the promise of scientific discoveries that could drive innovation in fields like cryogenics, superconducting magnets and vacuum technologies that could benefit humankind.

Outside experts point to the promise of learning more about the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that has been controversially dubbed “the God particle,” which helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.

Work at the particle collider confirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson — the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe.

“This set of reports represents an important milestone in the process, but a full sense of the likelihood of it being brought to fruition will only be known through careful studies by scientists, engineers and others, including politicians who must make difficult decisions at time when uncertainty rules the day,” Dave Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, said in an e-mail.

The new collider “provides an exciting opportunity for the particle physics community, and indeed all of physics, on the world stage,” said Toback, who was not affiliated with the plans, and who worked for years at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in the United States that was shut down in 2011.

CERN scientists, engineers and partners behind the plans considered at least 100 scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed 91-kilometer circumference at an average depth of 200 meters (656 feet). The tunnel would be about 5 meters (16 feet) in diameter, CERN said.