The sophisticated, music-based constructions of Saâdane Afif are just beginning to receive international recognition. Working in Berlin, Afif creates installations and neon signs that use musical composition, notation, and iconography to structure and guide the viewer's experience.

For Lyrics, his "sung retrospective" at Palais de Tokyo in 2005, Afif asked composers such as Tujiko Noriko and Ludovic Poulet (aka Portradium) to create music based on lyrics he commissioned from writers, describing his earlier works. He then covered the gallery walls with the texts while providing headphones for visitors to listen to the interpretations of his art.

Occupying the literal and figurative epicenter of documenta 12's temporary Aue-Pavilion, Afif's Black Chords Plays Lyrics combines Lyrics' novel retrospective approach with Power Chords, a 2005 work that turned wooden sculptures by minimalist artist André Cadere into music. Afif has arranged 13 guitars and amps in a black-draped room that also serves as a passageway to the other half of the exhibition. The guitars are hooked up to mechanized strummers, which cover the guitar strings like black plastic hubcaps. Approaching from afar, one hears the eerie echo of the seemingly random chords as they filter through the pavilion. Upon leaving the room, the experience repeats, this time with the sound receding into the sensory confusion of the other installations.

This restrained disruption of perception, movement, and space is a thought-provoking formal experiment. While compressing an entire other career into one installation, it also engages viewers on an immediate level and constitutes a haunting calling card for an innovative artist.

-AM