Heiner Goebbels - "Landscape Plays"
I am very honoured to have the opportunity to show Landscape Plays in a dialogue with the numerous treasures of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai. I am especially excited, how the sounds and all the things and objects in the Landscape Plays: monuments, instruments, paintings, and the elements: water, wind, fog and ice - communicate with the precious objects of the museum. There will also be living performers to be seen. But if so - and in contradiction to more traditional forms of the performing arts - they are not necessarily in the centre of attention. They move, they arrange things, they are 'in relation' as much as the visitors are 'in relation' to what they see and what they hear.
Biography
Heiner Goebbels (b. 1952, lives in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin) is amongst the most important exponents of the contemporary music and theatre scene. His compositions for ensembles and big orchestras published by Ricordi Berlin are performed worldwide along with several of his music theatre works and staged concerts.
He has created internationally celebrated compositions for ensemble and large orchestras (Surrogate Cities, A House Of Call), music-theatre pieces (Max Black, Eraritjaritjaka), staged concerts (Songs of Wars I have Seen), radio plays, sound and video installations (Documenta, Centre Pompidou, Museo da Arte Bogota, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, MMCA Seoul - among others).
About the Project
‘Landscape Plays’ ist the first solo exhibition in India by internationally acclaimed composer, artist and theatre-maker Heiner Goebbels. It is a play on the proximity between contemporary performing arts and visual art, which is characteristic of Heiner Goebbels world-renowned musical theatre pieces.
‘Landscape Plays’ is inspired by the writings of American author Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). In fact, the term Landscape plays was coined by Stein to describe her plays, that circumvented linear narration and traditional structures in order to change the course of traditional theatre, with emphasized representation. On stage, there is no consistency or message or plot. Rather, Stein insists on the separate reality of her texts, on the free play of words, forms, colours, movement, and meanings that render the viewer sovereign. Just as when viewing a landscape in nature or an image of a landscape, the viewer may decide where to focus his or her attention.
„A landscape does not move nothing really moves in a landscape but things are there, and I put into the play the things that were there. Magpies are in the landscape that is they are in the sky of a landscape, they are black and white and they are in the sky of the landscape.“ Gertrude Stein: Plays, in: Lectures in America.
For the exhibition in Mumbai, Goebbels has selected several works in which among other components, animals and the play of the elements themselves (for example, fog, water) enter 'the stage'.
The installation consists of the following works, 7 Columns and The Last Painting, Landscape 3, Stifters Dinge / Stifter's Things – together these works question collective memory, human-nonhuman tensions, and human-technology relations. Heiner Goebbels has also premiered a new work in this exhibition titled ‘Eagles’. Shot in Mumbai in 2025, this work offers a anachronical conversation about time against the historical photos of Bombay from the museum’s collection.
By situating Goebbels’ practice within a museum framework, the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai continue their commitment to fostering international artistic exchange and expanding the boundaries of exhibition-making.
Photo Gallery
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The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, founded in 1857 and originally the Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay, is Mumbai’s oldest museum and one of its most treasured heritage landmarks. It was the city’s first purpose-built museum, celebrated for its striking architecture and historic significance.
Its collections highlight the brilliance of Indian master craftsmen and Early Modern artists, while the Mumbai-focused galleries—featuring rare dioramas and models—offer vivid glimpses of life in the 19th century.
Today, the Museum serves as a vibrant centre for cultural learning. Through exhibitions and educational programmes, it encourages visitors, especially children, to explore and appreciate Mumbai’s artistic, cultural, and economic history, and to foster a spirit of cross-cultural understanding.
