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Max Mueller Bhavan | India Pune

Pipio - a bird flies, a stone is thrown

Performance Tableaux|bei Kochi Muziris Biennale 2025-26

  • Forplay Society, Kochi

  • English
  • Free Entry

a bird flies, a stone is thrown Aditi Kulkarni & Payal Arya

a bird flies, a stone is thrown Aditi Kulkarni & Payal Arya

a bird flies, a stone is thrown is a moving image installation by Aditi Kulkarni and Payal Arya, conceived as a series of living tableaux. Performers appear suspended in a continuous ripple through time, inhabiting moments that seem to unfold endlessly. Within these scenes, characters shift fluidly between the roles of witness, victim, and perpetrator.

The work explores the politics of the body—its fragility, vulnerability, and conformity—while evoking a lingering sense of non-resistance. Viewers are drawn into the position of the onlooker or bystander. Time is deliberately stretched through staged scenes, transforming each moment into a recurrence.

A pendulum in constant motion becomes a metaphor for what cannot be forgotten, while sculptural debris stands as scattered fragments—residue of collective guilt and shared shame. The installation questions the role of the “silent watcher” within today’s global political landscape and reflects on the weight of individual and collective responsibility, as well as the cyclical patterns through which histories persist, overlap, and repeat.

This project will be co-presented by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Pune, in collaboration with the Gujral Foundation and Forplay Society, at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025–26.

Inauguration on 10.01.2026, 4 PM at the Forplay Society!

Artists

Payal Arya

Payal Arya creates site-specific, immersive installations exploring nonlinear time, bodily perception, and agency. She holds a BA in Psychology and Sociology (Bombay University), a BFA (Rachana Sansad), and an MFA (Shiv Nadar University), and teaches in the BFA department at Jindal Global University.

Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across India and internationally, including Kala Ghoda Festival, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India Art Fair, VHC Gallery, and Serendipity Arts Festival. She has participated in residencies, workshops, and collaborative projects, and her films and VR works have screened at COP27, India Art Fair, New York, Dubai, and Europe.

Aditi Kulkarni

Aditi Kulkarni is a Pune-based artist whose practice explores time, spatial alienation, momentum, and the politics of everyday life. A British Council–Charles Wallace India Trust fellow (Spike Island, Bristol, 2009), she has participated in international residencies, workshops, and film-video festivals, including Triangle Workshop (Zambia), New Media AMALA (Egypt), and Shifting Studios (India). Her works have been shown globally at venues such as India Art Fair, TRANSBORDA (Portugal), New Media Art Space (New York), and Festival Tous Courts (France). She co-directed the film PIPIO and the VR project Memory is Always in the Periphery.