For the eighth session of our series on poetry and sound, curator and co-host Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein invites Natasha Ginwala for an evening of sonic drift and tidal resonance.

From the murmuring tongues of mangroves to deep-sea hums and estuarial murmurs, this session grounds us in our relationship to the bodies of water that give us life. Listening becomes a method of mapping submerged histories and sensing what moves below the surface. With poetry, field recordings, and shared reflection, we follow the vibrations of water as memory, as movement, as witness. This session invites us to listen with the whole body—attuned to both the quiet pull and the sudden swell. We are particularly excited to share a couple of tracks from Natasha’s recently released vinyl The Ancestral Well: Pulse to Terrain, conceived with Sarathy Korwar as part of Sharjah Biennial 16 ‘to carry.’

Natasha Ginwala is a curator, writer, and researcher. She is co-curator of Sharjah Biennial 16 (2023–25), artistic director of Colomboscope, Sri Lanka, and was associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018–2024). Ginwala co-directed the 13th Gwangju Biennale and was part of the curatorial team of the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014), Contour Biennale 8, documenta 14 (2017), as well as co-curating numerous major international exhibitions. Ginwala is a widely published author with a focus on contemporary art, visual culture, and social justice.

Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein is a curator and writer based in Berlin. She previously worked at Esther Schipper as an Artist Liaison, and before that was a freelance curator on projects with Fondazione Prada, Slavs and Tatars, and SAVVY Contemporary, among others.