Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz at Istituto Svizzero Roma
Duo Show «How we always survived», October 17, 2025 until February 1, 2026
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Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists
how we always survived is the first solo exhibition by Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz in Italy. Boudry / Lorenz’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses sculpture, performance, choreography, music, and film installation, often combined into immersive installations that challenge the conventions of both the white cube and the black box. Conceived specifically for the spaces of Villa Maraini, how we always survived includes new commissions alongside existing works, harmonised within a timed installation that unfolds across the villa’s various rooms.
how we always survived explores the doings of sound as a language capable of shaping hope, mourning, and desire in repressive contexts. The title is taken from a sentence by activist Chelsea Manning, one of the exhibition’s protagonists, referring to the role music had for her during her time in prison. The exhibition plays on the boundary between the choice to speak out and the possibility of transforming speech into sound, blurring the lines between aesthetic and political acts.
In the works on display, voice becomes the means to let forgotten pasts resonate, echoing through the villa’s rooms and evoking other places through song. Dance functions as a programmatic tool to guide a collective movement of bodies. The architecture of the villa itself seems to move, participating in the composition with a sequence of gestures that exploit the opposition between light and darkness, sound and silence, pause and motion. The resulting grand choreography appears to pose a question: can moving side by side, in concert, simultaneously connect political disillusion and utopian aspiration?
Biography
Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz have been working together in Berlin since 2007. They produce installations that choreograph the tension between visibility and opacity. Their films capture performances in front of the camera, often starting with a song, a picture, a film or a score from the near past. They upset normative historical narratives and conventions of spectatorship, as figures and actions across time are staged, layered and re-imagined. Their performers are choreographers, artists and musicians, with whom they are having a long-term conversation about the conditions of performance, the violent history of visibility, the pathologization of bodies, but also about companionship, glamour and resistance.
Their work has been recently shown at various prestigious institutions and biennials around the world, showcasing their unique approach to performance, history, and visibility.
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on All the things she said (2025). Performance: Chelsea Manning» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: Marcelle Alix & Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on All the things she said (2025). Performance: Chelsea Manning» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: Marcelle Alix & Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on Wig Piece (Right Body, Wrong Time) V / Wig Piece (Right Body, Wrong Time) VIII (2025)» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: Marcelle Alix & Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on Bar Piece (2025) and All the things she said (2025)» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: Marcelle Alix & Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on (No) Time (2020), Choreography and performance: Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Joy Alpuerto Ritter, Aaliyah Thanisha» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists and Fonds régional d’art contemporain Bretagne
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on (No) Time (2020), Choreography and performance: Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Joy Alpuerto Ritter, Aaliyah Thanisha» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists and Fonds régional d’art contemporain Bretagne
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on (No) Time (2020), Choreography and performance: Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Joy Alpuerto Ritter, Aaliyah Thanisha» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists and Fonds régional d’art contemporain Bretagne
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on El Cristal Es Mi Piel (Glass Is My Skin)(2025), Performance: Aérea Negrot» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: Marcelle Alix & Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on El Cristal Es Mi Piel (Glass Is My Skin)(2025), Performance: Aérea Negrot» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: Marcelle Alix & Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on All The Things She Said, 2025, video still, performance: Chelsea Manning» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists
how we always survived is the first solo exhibition by Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz in Italy. Boudry / Lorenz’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses sculpture, performance, choreography, music, and film installation, often combined into immersive installations that challenge the conventions of both the white cube and the black box. Conceived specifically for the spaces of Villa Maraini, how we always survived includes new commissions alongside existing works, harmonised within a timed installation that unfolds across the villa’s various rooms.
how we always survived explores the doings of sound as a language capable of shaping hope, mourning, and desire in repressive contexts. The title is taken from a sentence by activist Chelsea Manning, one of the exhibition’s protagonists, referring to the role music had for her during her time in prison. The exhibition plays on the boundary between the choice to speak out and the possibility of transforming speech into sound, blurring the lines between aesthetic and political acts.
In the works on display, voice becomes the means to let forgotten pasts resonate, echoing through the villa’s rooms and evoking other places through song. Dance functions as a programmatic tool to guide a collective movement of bodies. The architecture of the villa itself seems to move, participating in the composition with a sequence of gestures that exploit the opposition between light and darkness, sound and silence, pause and motion. The resulting grand choreography appears to pose a question: can moving side by side, in concert, simultaneously connect political disillusion and utopian aspiration?
Biography
Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz have been working together in Berlin since 2007. They produce installations that choreograph the tension between visibility and opacity. Their films capture performances in front of the camera, often starting with a song, a picture, a film or a score from the near past. They upset normative historical narratives and conventions of spectatorship, as figures and actions across time are staged, layered and re-imagined. Their performers are choreographers, artists and musicians, with whom they are having a long-term conversation about the conditions of performance, the violent history of visibility, the pathologization of bodies, but also about companionship, glamour and resistance.
Their work has been recently shown at various prestigious institutions and biennials around the world, showcasing their unique approach to performance, history, and visibility.
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on All The Things She Said, 2025, video still, performance: Chelsea Manning» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on All The Things She Said, 2025, video still, performance: Chelsea Manning» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on (No) Time, 2020, video still, choreography and performance: Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Joy Alpuerto Ritter, Aaliyah Thanisha» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on El Cristal Es Mi Piel (Glass Is My Skin)(2025), video still, performance: Aérea Negrot» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists
Exhibition View Duo Show Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz «How we always survived ; view on El Cristal Es Mi Piel (Glass Is My Skin)(2025), video still, performance: Aérea Negrot» at Istituto Svizzero Roma, Roma, 2025-2026 / Photo: Annik Wetter / Courtesy: the artists
