Pallavi Paul – How Love Moves: Prelude

Gropius Bau, Berlin
Curated by Natasha Ginwala
24 March — 21 July 2024

We very happily collaborated with Pallavi Paul on a giant book that is an extension of her video work The Dreams of Cynthia into the exhibition space and also the display architecture which was on view from August 2023, at the Gropius Bau. In How Love Moves: Prelude Gropius Bau, a scenography around the three-channel video installation Cynthia Ke Sapne / The Dreams of Cynthia (2017) transforms the historic Schliemannsaal into a twilight space between wakefulness and sleep. The installation is freely accessible and accompanied by the public programme Six Days of Love, unfolding as a series of cinematic readings, conversational formats, performances and sonic acts between August 2023 and Spring 2024.

Revolving around a contemporary poem of the same name composed by Anish Ahluwalia, the filmic work turns to spheres of love and tenderness as well as the brutality of state violence through three protagonists: an executioner, a trans artist and the literary figure of Cynthia. While the lives of the first two intertwine within the remnants of a post-industrial landscape in India, Cynthia emerges as an imaginative and ever-evolving character shifting across fields of place-making and dreaming.

Printed at Siebdruckwerkstatt SDW
Graphic design and exhibition architecture: Studio Manuel Raeder (Eglė Petraškaitė and Manuel Raeder)