Opening »How Does a Nymph Feel?«

03|10|2026 Lovelab Dreamspace, Pappelallee 25, 10437 Berlin Past event

For the opening of DREAM 7, Banu Birecikligil is coming from Bodrum to Berlin to present her new Struwwelpeter series, the oil painting »The Nocturnal Walk,« and selected prints from thirty years of painting. In addition, she will show the new video collaboration »Darkstar« with Tim Ra.

For thirty years, Banu Birecikligil has been painting dreamscapes where human, animal, and myth overlap. Her forests, vegetation, and cities are less places than states of consciousness. Figures trapped in social and personal constraints encounter beings within them that exist beyond alienation.

At the center are three large-scale works on paper that interpret Struwwelpeter as an image of powerlessness and alienation. »I had such a feeling of decay in my own body or in my own soul,« the artist recalls the time they were made. In Turkish, there is a metaphor for this: the black water that flows into one's legs. Opposite them hangs »The Nocturnal Walk«—a female satyr roams a nocturnal landscape, next to a house emitting light.

Together with Tim Ra, this painting has grown into a cinematic world. The satyr's journey leads through experienced suffering, pain, and tears to new growth. The key to this is empathy.

»Darkstar« — Video collaboration by Banu Birecikligil and Tim Ra

Starting at 8 PM, Banu Birecikligil will speak publicly about her work: on Struwwelpeter as an image of powerlessness, on the black water, and on the question of what an unalienated consciousness feels like. A foretaste: the studio conversation that Tim Ra recorded in her studio in Bodrum.

Banu Birecikligil in her studio in Bodrum

To the exhibition →

Read the studio conversation →