From Berlin with Love: A Reminder to Hold Each Other Close
Photos by Lili Androsch
18 September 2026
Dear Reader,
Many of us will soon make the first batch of cinnamon rolls or kick off the fall season with a Harry Potter marathon. Berlin has its own way of starting the fall art season: the Berlin Art Week. The program of the five-day week is packed with gallery openings, performances, exhibitions, and artist talks, so many that the website of the Berlin Art Week was struggling to keep up with the events and performance times. But in Berlin , one is always spoiled for choice when it comes to art events, so overall, it did not feel like a change of pace within the town. In the city, the main giveaway that the Art Week was happening was the bright green Charlie XCX-like posters that were spread throughout Berlin to advertise the festival.
On Saturday, I made my way to the Gemäldegalerie to visit the performance Alternde Meister. At first, I was confused while walking through the gallery; I did not seem to find the performance and was anxious to miss it. Then, a shirtless man jogged past me, in full running gear: athletic footwear, a fitness tracker on his arm, and sports sunglasses. In utter disbelief, I watched him run alongside the paintings and realized that I did not find the performance, but it found me. The whole piece took place in sixteen rooms of the Gemäldegalerie. The twenty-five performers had their own rooms in the gallery but also moved between them. The audience could either follow them or linger in one room for a while, observing the performance like one of the paintings on display.
One of the pieces made me lose track of time. Walking into the room, I saw an elderly couple sitting next to each other. At first, I was not sure if they were performers or just visitors taking a short break. But then the man put his hand on the woman's chest and started guiding her breathing. The sound of their breaths filled the almost empty room. The man took her hands and pulled her up from the bench, so slowly, so gently, as if she was a porcelain doll that he didn't want to break. He held her close, and they started dancing, one small step at a time, holding each other, not rushing. It was a touching moment; it made me call my grandparents after leaving the Gemäldegalerie.
The other performances included a delicate young woman walking through the rooms in an oversized T-shirt that made her seem even tinier, two women giggling and interacting with each other like siblings, and, of course, because we're in Berlin after all, a DJ creating a mix, but with his back turned to the audience. The end of one of the thirty-minute cycles was marked by all the performers coming together in one room to sing in unity. After their song, they all hugged each other, and the cycle began again.
Ersan Mondtag and Nadim Samman curated the piece.They were inspired by Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting The Fountain of Youth (1546), an exploration of age and transience. As in the painting, transformation, dressing, and communal encounters take center stage. Yet Alternde Meister shifted the focus: not the restoration of eternal youth, but the visibility of time lived becomes the starting point of a touching performance that draws attention to the body and highlights that wrinkles, scars, exhaustion, and vulnerability should be appreciated and interpreted as evidence of a life lived.
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