What does it mean to draw a city I have not visited? That was the first thought that crossed my mind when Roshini Vadehra, Director of the Vadehra Art Gallery, commissioned me to make a series postcards about Berlin.
It was a cold, rainy, sunless January in Delhi, with curfews in place as per Covid Omicron protocol. I hadn’t been travelling for awhile. It felt like the perfect time to inhabit another city. I decided to travel back to the past, to Berlin when it was just a small settlement thousands of years ago. It felt safe to begin there, it was a space that nobody else presently alive could have visited, and thus, the factuality of what I observed there with my mind’s eye could not be contested. The time machine I chose to travel in, was a book. Faust’s Metropolis by Alexandra Richie.
As I tumbled closer towards Berlin’s more recent history in the last couple of centuries, the city started to feel more like a very resilient person who’s ability to endure and yet stand up tall and sunny regardless left me with a message to keep for live. ‘Be like Berlin’ is what I think I could tell myself as a motivational proverb.
With a sense of the city’s history, and referencing photographs of the architectural city, I was able to create my version of Berlin, what I felt it might feel like to stroll through the city. A city I saw entirely in my mind’s eye.
Shoili Kanungo 