Unfolding the Sky

In Unfolding the Sky, Lerato Shadi —an internationally active visual and performance artist — takes the audience with her, into her grandmother’s house in South Africa. The performance is both an invitation and an exploration. Countless corridors, doors, and thresholds lead into the interior of an architecture deeply connected to the land and the life of her grandmother.


“Come. come, see my home!

It’s anyplace where nobody gives orders,

it’s any moment of surprise…”


This might be the invitation — like the famous lines from Bessie Head’s poem about her “home,” her calm space amidst the storm. And just like this poetry, Lerato Shadi proceeds both cautiously and purposefully, as she explores and questions the house, traces her grandmother’s legacy, and investigates the creative power of women — of conditions not just for survival, but for living and dreaming. She searches for the complex contradictions that make us who we are.


Unfolding the Sky is the opening production of the festival Black Berlin Black – Festivity at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Lerato Shadi’s visual and performance works have been shown at biennials such as the 14th Curitiba Biennial in Brazil, and in museums including the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. In Berlin, her solo exhibitions have been shown, among others, at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art. Since 2021, she has worked as a dramaturge on several dance and theatre productions at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, including Carving Out Community with the akademie der autodidakten, and most recently Lois Alexander’s Eventually Causing the Shake (2023) and the portrait performance Ashley Temba (2025).


Unfolding the Sky is Lerato Shadi’s first solo performance at Ballhaus Naunynstraße.


PLEASE NOTE: +++ Bags (larger than DIN A5) and jackets must be handed out at the cloakroom



(in English)