
Anri Sala, Artist
Shiao-Jen Yeh, Executive Director of Winsing Arts Foundation
Winsing Art Place (1/F. 6, Lane 10, Lane 180, Section 6, Minquan East Road, Neihu District, Taipei City)
Free, prior registration is required
Unrestricted
At the end of 2022, the Winsing Arts Foundation presented artist Anri Sala’s solo exhibition AS YOU GO at Winsing Art Place. Centered on an immersive video experience, the exhibition showcased AS YOU GO in the Foundation’s collection, which comprises three video works, including —Ravel, Ravel, Take Over, and If and only if. The fluidity of music and imagery made, the entire exhibition feel like a large-scale kinetic sculpture, offering visitors an experience akin to a “parade.” Beyond video, Sala also works across various media—such as installations, paintings, prints, and more recently, frescoes—to explore themes of identity, history, memory, and the interrelationship between past, present, and future.
At the exhibition’s opening, the Foundation invited the artist to an online conversation, during which he shared many thoughts on the exhibition and his works. On October 4, we are honored to welcome Sala in person to a special lecture and dialogue with Winsing Arts Foundation Executive Director Shiao-Jen Yeh about her collected works. This rare opportunity offers a new perspective on Sala’s artistic practice.
The lecture began with Executive Director Shiao-Jen Yeh discussing a piece from her collection, which is also part of Sala’s recent Fresco Painting series. The artist shared that fresco painting is a unique technique he first encountered during his university years. He compared this method to a bridge connecting painting with temporality, allowing it to break free from the conventional framework of painting. Extending on the topic of painting, he also spoke about the development of art in Albania the past to the present, and its relationship with political influences.
During the lecture, Sala presented a range of his video works from early to recent years, including Intervista, created while he was studying at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The work originated in 1997, when he discovered a 16mm black-and-white newsreel while helping his parents move into a new apartment. The film documented his mother, then serving as a leader of the Albanian Labor Youth Union, being interviewed under the communist regime, and explored the subtle relationship between these historical clips and their editing.
Executive Director Yeh first encountered Sala’s work at the 2017 Venice Biennale, when 1395 Days without Redwas exhibited at the Customs House Museum. This work, filmed in reference to the Siege of Sarajevo, presents the interval between the past and the present within a single image. From the scene depicting a woman crossing an intersection in 1395 Days without Red, the discussion extended to a snail’s slow crawl in If and Only If. By chance, Yeh later acquired the artist’s AS YOU GO, a work that brings together three significant pieces—Take Over, If and Only If, and Ravel, Ravel—which was exhibited at Winsing Art Place in 2022. At the close of the lecture, through works such as Ravel, Ravel, Unravel, and Time No Longer, Sala spoke about the importance of the “interval” in his practice.
