Anri Sala

Anri Sala employs moving images and their soundtracks to investigate historical ruptures and failures of language. Using a variety of platforms including video installation, sculpture, photography, performance, and movie scores, he explores non-verbal modes of expression through narratives or ideas. His work opens to a multiplicity of perspectives and interpretations by distancing the viewer from a “logical,” direct or language-based understanding. In contrast to traditional cinema, Sala's distinctive use of film challenges the supremacy of the image, instead allowing sound to serve as an important narrative cue. The music speaks to history and memory, bringing the viewer’s past, present and future into a single filmic experience. This “continuous present” found in Sala’s work has the effect of grounding the audience in a specific moment rather than projecting them into the illusion of what they see. His videos are presented in a wide range of immersive spaces that must be experienced with the whole body: modified environments with careful lighting and sound design that stimulate a visceral experience of the surrounding architecture. By creating this state of awareness, Sala proposes an exercise in civil resistance with political implications; his work allows us to reconsider the relationship of our own space and time to the location and historical moment depicted in the films. Sala studied at the University of Arts (UART) in Tirana, Albania, after which he attended the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris. He completed his Postgraduate Studies in film directing at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing, France. In 2001, he received the Young Artist Prize of the 49th Venice Biennial and was recipient of the Absolut Art Award 2011 and Prix Gilles-Dusein (2000). He was also shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize (2002) and Pries der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst (2005).