Seventeen Grams of Longing tells of unconscious and conscious, individual and collective longings through the lens of the intertwined lives of two men and their interest in migratory birds. In 2024, the artistic legacies of two brothers were discovered on two different continents. Through the respective findings in Berlin and Toronto, we learn about their shared passion and once again ask ourselves one of the questions that the sciences have been asking for decades: How much are we determined by nature, and how much by our experiences?

For her project Seventeen Grams of Longing, Iris Häussler developed the two characters Kurt and (K)Carl, twins who were born in Germany during the Second World War and then separated as small children. While Kurt continued to reside in Berlin, (K)Carl's life took its course first in the US and then later on in Toronto, Canada. As the twins grew up on different continents, they never saw each other again; in the context of the exhibition Seventeen Grams of Longing in March/April 2024 at PSM in Berlin and in September/October 2024 at Daniel Faria in Toronto, the two figures symbolically meet again "in the air".

Read more in the PDF press release.

Quotes from *Iris Häussler, text by Iris Häussler and Sabine Schmidt.