LOVE LETTER TO THOSE WHO DID NOT SURVIVE

Artist Grace Schwindt works across a range of media, including sculpture, painting, film and performance. Whatever medium she chooses, the body repeatedly takes centre stage in her work—as an archive, a repository of memories. Kunsthaus Wiesbaden is presenting the artist’s first comprehensive solo exhibition.

The exhibition includes the choreographic work Love Letter to Those Who Did Not Survive, in which Schwindt explores the trauma of war and the experiences of those who did not survive it. The work is based on diary entries by women from different periods and geographical contexts. Together with a dancer, Schwindt translated the actions and gestures described in these accounts into a distinct movement language, using methods drawn from dance movement psychotherapy.

This movement language was documented in a video archive and now forms the choreographic basis for the work with dancers of Hessisches Staatsballett, who use it to develop a performance. The result creates a space in which historical testimonies are not narrated, but made tangible through physical presence, bringing past and present into an immediate dialogue.

Duration: approx. 40 minutes

LOVE LETTER TO THOSE WHO DID NOT SURVIVE is a production by Hessisches Staatsballett & Grace Schwindt, in collaboration with Kunsthaus Wiesbaden.