Kunstverein Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2025

Being Renée Sintenis, 2022-2023, 4k video, 13:34 min., stereo sound

Being Renée Sintenis is a film about the Berlin sculptor Renée Sintenis (1888–1965). An androgynous icon of the "New Woman," she stood at the center of Berlin's art scene and was considered the most photographed female artist of the 1920s.
Throughout her life, Sintenis focused on animal representation. Her small-scale bronze sculptures idealized nature as a space free from social attribution, capturing the spirit of her time. Despite remarkable success on the art market — rare for a woman artist of the period — she was known for her introverted personality and deliberately avoided interpreting her own work.
In the film, Sintenis reclaims her narrative in an invented interview, challenging the passive, self-effacing figure preserved in biographies.
A rotating stage serves both as a pedestal for her animal sculptures — filmed at the Neue Nationalgalerie — and as a platform for cinematic objects and the artist's body. Fragmented lighting and shifting perspectives dissolve linear chronology, suggesting an open, looping narrative.