how we always survived is the first solo exhibition of Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz in Italy. 

Boudry / Lorenz's multidisciplinary practice includes sculpture, performance, choreography, music, and film, often combined in environmental installations that challenge both the conventions of the white cube and those of the black box. Specifically conceived for the spaces of Villa Maraini, how we always survived includes new commissions and existing works harmonized in a timed installation that unfolds through the different rooms of the villa.

how we always survived explores the possibilities of sound as a language capable of shaping hope, mourning, and desire in repressive contexts. The title is taken from a phrase uttered by activist Chelsea Manning, one of the protagonists of the exhibition, referring to the role that music played for her during her time in prison. The exhibition plays on the boundary between choosing to speak and the possibility of transforming it into sound, blurring the lines between aesthetic acts and political acts. 

In the works on display, the voice becomes a means to bring forgotten pasts to light, echoing in the rooms of the villa and evoking other places through song. Dance becomes a programmatic tool to guide a collective body movement. The architecture of the villa seems to move in turn, participating in the composition with a sequence of gestures that exploit the opposition between light and dark, sound and silence, pause and movement. The resulting grand choreography seems to pose a question: moving side by side, in harmony, can it connect at the same time to political disillusionment and utopian aspiration?