A Horn That Swallows Songs (2025) investigates the residual cost of invisible labour – particularly that performed by women – in Istanbul’s Turkish Delight (lokum) factories. The installation unfolds across two rooms, generating an immersive environment that echoes the conditions of the factory floor: endless shifts, repetitive rhythms and prolonged standing. Meanwhile, low-frequency vibrations emanating from ultrasonic speakers, floor transducers and sub-woofers travel through the floor into viewers’ bodies, transmitting a visceral bodily sensation.
At the heart of the installation stands a polished metal structure embedded with four video screens. Each screen displays documentary footage drawn from Kastrati’s field visits to lokum factories, including interviews with workers. One video features a single narrator’s voice taken from interview transcripts, highlighting the gap between the workers’ realities and the sanitised versions of management, further underscoring the enforced silence and controlled narratives surrounding their labour. While the presence of supervisors in these interviews is subtle, their influence remains palpable – shaping not only the workers’ conditions, but also their capacity for speech, expression and disclosure. In an adjoining room, a sculpture fashioned from repurposed factory machinery takes the form of a horn-like vent, recalling those used in halva-making and underscoring the entanglement between sound, labour, and architectures of production.
Doruntina Kastrati was born in 1991 in Prizren. She currently lives and works in Pristina.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Doruntina Kastrati (b. 1991, Prizren) is an artist based in Pristina who works mainly across sculpture, installation, sound and moving image. Through her practice, Doruntina focuses on the body and its relationship to biopolitical power. Specifically, she directs attention to social and political issues of labour in the global context. Solo exhibitions include Clouds of White Dust, Secci Gallery, Milan (2025); No Burning, No Wounds, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana (2024); The Echoing Silences of Metal and Skin, the Republic of Kosovo Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). Group exhibitions include 16th Sharjah Biennial (2025); Manifesta 14, Pristina (2022); Bigger than Myself. Heroic voices from ex-Yugoslavia, MAXXI Museum, Rome (2021).
EXHIBITED WORKS
Doruntina Kastrati (b. 1991)
A Horn That Swallows Songs, 2025
Aluminium, steel, 4-channel video, sound
Variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist
4-Channel video installation:
Repetition (channel 1), 2025
11:37 min
Production (channel 2), 2025
15:17 min
Monotony (channel 3), 2025
4:31 min
Mechanical Pain (channel 4), 2025
4:57 min
Sound installation:
24-channel, ultrasonic beam speakers, low-frequency floor transducers, quadraphonic ceiling speakers, custom speakers, subwoofer
Contributors:
Video production and 3D modelling: Kushtrim Thaqi
Composition and sound installation: Paul Hauptmeier, Martin Recker
Architect: Okan Xhemaili
Doruntina Kastrati (b. 1991)
Songs, 2025
Aluminium, steel, speaker
108 × 77 × 19 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Contributors:
Video production and 3D modelling: Kushtrim Thaqi
Composition and sound installation: Paul Hauptmeier, Martin Recker
Architect: Okan Xhemaili
