Over the past two decades Anri Sala (*1974, Tirana) has created an exceptional body of films and installations in which sound, music and the projected image come together to express themes of lived and historic time. This exhibition, which extends over two floors of Mudam, presents major installations, film works and drawings created by Sala in the past five years. The title Le Temps coudé, borrows from the French phrase ‘faire un coude’ and refers to warps or bends in our experience of what we see, hear and know.

Far from being mere accompaniments to the image, sound and music play a key role in Sala’s works, employed by the artist for their ability to reveal and ‘open up’ the space of the present. Drawing upon a range of music styles, from classical and free jazz to pop and contemporary music, Sala evokes an idea of collective, historical and cultural memory via immersive, sensorial installations.

This focus on experience is also found in the way Sala orchestrates the presentation of his works. Each exhibition is unique in configuration and is designed, to quote Sala, as a ‘continuum of presences and flows’, a ‘site of conjunctions and interrelations,’ in which the physical presence of the viewer is an active component.