Dominique Roodthooft’s artistic work consistently focuses on humans and their resilience. Here she examines exile as a vital and universal movement to other places. She adapts the tradition of “patuas”, storytellers from West Bengal who paint their own scrolls illustrating stories, tales and poetry. As they are unrolled, they are translated into song by young actors, pointing along as the story is told. Eight illustrators appropriated different life accounts gathered in the Greater Region of Luxembourg (Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Germany) to create new illustrated stories put to music by Pierre Kissling. The outcome is eight different sung narratives that each reflect a reality of exile (economic, political, poetic, chosen, interior, exile from exile, absence of exile and exile from others).

Wandering among the Patachitras stations, the audience stops to see and hear these life accounts that echo the great modern migrations. Small sensitive forms that push away fear or suffering, not to flee reality, but to look at it from a benevolent, curious and inquisitive perspective.