Love Letters from Deep Waters | Grief is a Language of Love

We all carry grief, even when we don’t call it by its name. So often misunderstood as weight or weakness, when we look inside, it is a language of love, spoken for people, places, futures, and parts of ourselves that could not stay.

Grief is not only personal. It is collective. It carries the weight of histories, relationships, bodies, and futures that were taken or denied. Being with grief together is a way of refusing isolation, of acknowledging that loss is part of how we are shaped.

The work is not about healing in a linear sense. It is about staying with what remains, letting it be felt, and allowing the body to remember how to hold loss with tenderness and compassion.

We will move slowly. We will pause often. We will give ourselves time. We will listen.

We will listen to what grief says rather than what we think should happen to it. Through somatic movement, stillness, breath, and journaling, we will grow our capacity to feel grief and lighten our bodies through our own as well as collective presence.

Because grief is the language of love.

Please come with comfortable clothing, warm socks, a notebook, and a pen.

If you'd like to attend the whole series, you can find a discounted ticket .

About the facilitator

(they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans long-durational live performances,  video,  installation, text, and public interventions. Leman's work delves into the intricate intersections of chronopolitics and necropolitics, with a keen focus on the vulnerability and resilience of marginalized, especially queer bodies. Their artistic inquiry is driven by a deep engagement with histories of violence and systems of privilege, challenging and re-appropriating these narratives from a distinctly Southwest Asian perspective.

Since 2016, Leman has led various workshops focused on body, movement, performance, and long-durational practices in Turkey and Europe. They view these workshop processes as opportunities for collective sharing and creating spaces for each other. They are committed to fostering safer environments where queer individuals, BIPOCs, and members of marginalized communities can connect with their bodies and transform their vulnerabilities into strengths through performance art.

Leman holds an MFA in Live Art Forms degree from the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg, with distinction, and received the DAAD Prize 2024 with their graduation project. They showed their works at Pickle Bar, Berlin (2025); Door Foundation, Amsterdam (2024); Ornamenta2024, Pforzheim (2024); SANATORIUM, Istanbul (2024); Europride23, Valetta (2023); Bärenzwinger, Berlin (2023); ICA, London (2022); Goethe Institute, Rome (2022); SALT, Istanbul   (2022); Schwules Museum, Berlin (2021); Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2018), among others. They are one of the recipients of the Gwaetler Grant 2025 by Gwaetler Foundation.

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