If and Only If, 2018

Within Anri Sala’s artistic production, music has taken on an ever more important role: traces may be found of it both in his numerous film works and in his sound sculptures which, since 2009, have included specially modified rolling instruments. In the major video installations of recent years, references have become more explicit, through genuine homages to the biographical vicissitudes of great composers and performers of the past, such as Ravel, Mozart and Puccini.

Acquired for the collection, the video If and Only If (2018) shows the performance of Elegy for Solo Viola that Igor Stravinsky wrote in 1944, at the start of his American exile, at the request of the Belgian violist Germain Prévost. [...]