At the age of four, Anri Sala was taken to the Palace of Pioneers in Tirana, then capital of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, in order to begin the violin lessons he had asked his parents for. ‘So there was this man sitting in front of a piano,’ the artist recalls, ‘and he needed to check if I had an ear.’ In a small, darkened room, the instructor clapped out a series of rhythms for the boy to repeat, each one longer and more complex than the last, ‘and I got so worried that I would miss the next one,’ Sala says. But he didn't falter. ‘Good,’ said the violin teacher finally, satisfied with the boy's ability to recognize and repeat a rhythm. ‘You're done.’
