An introduction to the works in the exhibition
In this text, curator Andrea Kroksnes gives an insight into the works on display. She writes about Anawana Haloba’s installations as mediators of traditional storytelling forms, while also referring to current socio-political themes.
The exhibition takes its title from I Want to Tell You Something, a video installation in which the artist hums This Land Is Your Land, the iconic folk song by Woody Guthrie. The song, often associated with freedom and protest, becomes here a quiet, almost meditative act—questioning who belongs, who owns the land, and the meaning of identity.
Interwoven with the humming is a gesture of writing and erasure; the artist writes phrases from a fictive conversation with Federico García Lorca and Hannah Arendt on her hands, washes them off, and writes again. This repetitive act embodies a cycle of inscription and erasure, reflecting how identities are formed, questioned, and change over time. Arendt, was deeply sceptical of the idea of the nation state, which she saw as a system that fails to protect basic human rights.
The artist’s humming of the well-known melody carries through the exhibition and links to other works.
In "Lamentations", a video installation from 2008, the artist licks grains of salt with her tongue. The sound of the salt cracking becomes almost visceral, turning the act of viewing into something physical. Salt is layered with meaning: it is present in the body, in tears, is used in preservation, and as a symbol of resistance.
One potent historical reference is to Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March of 1930—a pivotal act of non-violent resistance against colonial salt taxes in British India. Gandhi walked 240 miles to the sea to make salt, reclaiming a basic human resource from colonial control. Echoes of that resistance appear in Haloba’s salt- stone installation "Close-up" (2010–2016); large salt crystals suspended from the ceiling slowly dissolve, their water dripping into metal bowls and ceramic pots. The amplified sound becomes a metronome of loss and transformation.
Interwoven with the rhythm of the dripping salt, are voices in the Zambian siLuyana language and in Guariní spoken in several South American countries. Both languages are at risk of extinction. SiLuyana is the language of the artist’s mother, spoken in south-western Zambia, Namibia and Angola. Many of the 70 indigenous languages and dialects in Zambia have struggled to survive since colonial education systems displaced local traditions. Haloba’s sound works give space to these voices and their histories—thematizing the underlying politics of the land.
In her most recent installation "Looking for Mukamusaba—An Experimental Opera", sculptures serve as protagonists. Made from traditional musical instruments and everyday tools like horns, bowls, drums and woven baskets, they are mounted on typical stools covered in cowhide. They animate the space with their visual and sonic presence. Among them is a kalumbu, a traditional string instrument with a single metal string stretched across a curved wooden bow, attached to a resonating calabash. Alongside it is the mosi ni chika, a mortar and pounding stick used in the preparation of maize or rice. Though not a musical instrument in the formal sense, its repetitive rhythm accompanies the communal singing of women, turning everyday labour into a collective rhythmic ritual.
A tall staff at the centre of the space refers to Mukamusaba—a mythological female spiritual being from southern Zambia. In oral traditions, Mukamusaba is associated with wisdom, resilience, and ancestral knowledge. She is sometimes understood as a guardian of transformation, a feminine force who watches over the community. The staff becomes more than a sculptural element: it functions as a transmitter of ancestral energy, anchoring the circular installation in deep cosmological traditions.
One sculpture seems to waffle, its latex trunk flapping up and down. An echo of meaningless political speech. Other sculptures sing or speak. Together, they create a polyphonic space, where voice, material and memory converge.
For one multi-screen installation, Haloba collaborated with a group of singers and dancers from the southern province of Zambia. They perform a musical procession in the chiyabilo tradition, typically practised during important rites of passage, particularly at funerals and on commemorative occasions. They enact a particular procession common in the region, in which they recount a devastating flood that occurred on the Zambezi River in 1930. A remembering and mourning of the dead and displaced. But instead of the original words, some of the performers sing the artist’s own libretto. In it, Haloba addresses current global issues, such as the wars and conflicts in Gaza, DR Congo, Sudan and the Ukraine. She presents multiple perspectives by having her sculptural protagonists take on different viewpoints. It can be understood as a collective form of opera, one that seeks to address the erasure of peoples and cultures. These traditional rites of mourning function as regenerational ways of archiving collective history, continuously adding to it and sharing anew.
Much like classical Italian opera, which has long had community-building and cathartic elements, the musical folk traditions of Zambia have similarly served a unifying and commemorative function—historically and in the present. These traditions, like those referenced in Haloba’s work, reveal how music and ritual can create shared spaces of memory, mourning, and resilience.
I en flerskjermsinstallasjon har Haloba samarbeidet med en gruppe sangere og dansere fra den sørlige provinsen i Zambia. De utfører en musikkprosesjon i chiyabilo-tradisjonen, som vanligvis praktiseres under viktige overgangsritualer, særlig i begravelser og ved minnehøytideligheter. De utfører en spesiell regional prosesjon som handler om en ødeleggende flom fra Zambezi-elven i 1930. En erindring om og sorg over de døde og fordrevne. I stedet for den opprinnelige teksten synger noen av sangerne kunstnerens egen libretto. Her tar Haloba opp aktuelle globale utfordringer, som krigene og konfliktene i Gaza, Ukraina, Kongo og Sudan. Hun presenterer flere perspektiver ved å gi de skulpturelle hovedpersonene forskjellige synspunkter. Dette kan forstås som en kollektiv form for opera, som søker å ta opp utslettelse av folk og kulturer. Disse tradisjonelle sorgritualene fungerer som metoder for arkivering av kollektiv historie. Det er en regenerativ praksis på den måten at det stadig legges til noe, og at det deles på nytt.
I likhet med klassisk italiensk opera, som lenge har hatt samfunnsbyggende og rensende elementer, har Zambias musikalske folketradisjoner på samme måte hatt en samlende og erindrende funksjon – både historisk og i dag. Disse tradisjonene, blant annet de som er referert til i Halobas verk, avslører hvordan musikk og ritualer kan skape felles rom for minner, sorg og motstandskraft.
Haloba’s work invites us to listen in new ways, not just with our ears, but to history, forgotten languages, and to the stories that materials can tell. Her art reminds us to make room for what is disappearing, and to imagine new ways of being that can grow from what is left behind.