In this prelude to Pallavi Paul’s upcoming major solo exhibition at the Gropius Bau in 2024, 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.
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.
