Shakuntala 117 – Remembrance of Love

Camille Claudel was an outstanding French sculptor. She was a student, mistress and collaborator of August Rodin. She left behind a meaningful personal story. Camilla’s life is mostly described by her statues. The words in the letters and testimonies have always directed our gaze back to her statues, which she mostly named after symbols and mythical persons in whom she recognized her feelings.

One of Camilla’s sculptures bears the title of a mythical story from the Mahabharata: Shakuntala. Around 300 AD Kalidas, who was the greatest Indian playwright according to Camille, wrote one of the most famous ancient Indian lyric-epic drama Shakuntala, which talks about love and abandonment. The analysis of sculptures woke feelings in us that we incorporated in our improvisations. The sculptures have melted, taken on new compositions, walked, spoken, and are now playing a new story in a sort of studio, entitled Shakuntala 117, Remembrance of Love; a hybrid of Kalidas’s Shakuntala, Camilla’s and Augustine’s relationship, and our personal experiences of falling in love, love, and abandonment.