Anri Sala

Anri Sala’s (*1974, Tirana, Albania) transformative, time-based works are based on a complex network comprising sound, image, installation, and architecture. In his artistic practice, Anri Sala examines concepts such as the perception of reality, truth, and historical transformation, utilizing personal experiences, socio-political contexts, and different forms of communication. In his early works of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Anri Sala used documentary strategies to examine life after communism in his native Albania, examining the role of language and memory in social and political storytelling. In his subtle visual narratives, Sala often depicted what appeared to be frames of everyday life, and his intimate observations experiment with fiction to double as enigmatic portraits of society. During the last decade, sound and music have adopted a key role; his installations engage both sight and sound, sometimes even the whole body. These works investigate ruptures in language, syntax, and music in order to validate or invalidate narrative and composition, inviting creative dislocations which generate new interpretations of history, supplanting old fictions with new, less explicit, and less duplicitous ones.

The works by Anri Sala can be find in many international collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fonds municipal d'art contemporain de la ville de Paris; MOMA, New York City; De Pont museum of contemporary art, Tilburg; Schaulager Basel; Museum Folkwang, Essen; FRAC Ile de France, Paris; Tate, London; ISRAEL MUSEUM, Jerusalem; Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, Zürich.