Anri Sala H(a)unted in the Doldrums, 2021

A snare drum is suspended upside-down, floating in midair, concealing a set of built-in speakers, whose frequencies set its membrane and drumsticks in motion. The ensuing ratatat of the drumsticks suppresses the very source that prompts their response: a voice reading a list of names. The voice triggers the drumsticks’ reaction, inadvertently impeding itself and consequently preventing the names from being heard.

These names are those of twenty-seven people with albinism who were victims of mutilation between 2016 and 2019 in Tanzania, the country with probably the highest rate of albinism in the world. Each of these twenty-seven victims survived attacks during which some of their body parts were violently removed and sold as supposedly magical ingredients for witchcraft-related rituals. The burnt surface of the drum with its light wood entrails left intact evokes a dichotomy between perception and insight, what is to be seen or believed and what constitutes the essence of something or someone, its right to exist.