A gentle prompt to “just breathe…”, a common starter for countless meditative practices, highlights that the act of inhalation is something we occasionally forget. Indeed, as a fundamental life force, we can survive for three weeks without food, a few days without water, but mere minutes without oxygen. Thus, the theme of life and death is implicit in the subject of breath. At the Take a Breath exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, an exploration into “why, how and what we breathe” leads one to ponder if there isn’t any artwork that isn’t fundamentally about breathing, considering the term “inspire” also signifies to breathe.
Contrarily, a free-diver might debunk the three-minute rule of oxygen deprivation. To challenge this preconception, the exhibition starts with an aquatic assembly by Italian artist Alex Cecchetti. Considering that almost fifty percent of the Earth’s oxygen is created by the ocean, video footage from his dives and free-dives in the Philippines is displayed on indigo-dyed silk hangings. Freediving champion and Irish artist Nina McGowan, who spoke at an affiliated exhibition discussion, asserts that the ocean is devoid of commodification, language, and capitalism. It is both encompassing and elusive at the same time. Viewers are encouraged to engage with Cecchetti’s hangings and hammocks, offering a glimpse into the delicate and somewhat foreign world of undersea ecology. During a recent tour, however, no attendees were seen to take up this interactive invitation.
With a title like Take a Breath, the exhibition ambitiously attempts to encapsulate a wide array of topics related to the theme. This includes breath’s role in meditation, its linguistic significance, its effect in warfare, the impact of environmental disaster on our air, and its implications on discussions around feminism, race, and ecology; the last-mentioned issue is addressed in a somewhat overloaded tripartite section. Regardless, with a wide diversity of artwork presented and a non-traditional curatorial approach, the exhibition maintains its sharp edge, offering enlightening revelations, without becoming too entangled in intellectualism.
The next installation in Imma’s stretched corridor is a creation of Lawrence Abu Hamdan, a Jordanian artist based in Beirut, titled ‘Air Conditioning’. This artwork, influenced by ‘atmospheric violence’, takes shape through a video and an extensive wall panel. It captures the tracking of Israeli fighter jets, drones, and other unmanned vehicles in the skies of Lebanon over 15 years, where Abu Hamdan sourced his data from the United Nations. Completed in 2022, prior to the ongoing Palestine conflict, this exhibition underlines the threatening omnipresent sound of these intrusive vehicles, causing environmental harm with their emissions.
The catastrophic environmental impacts of war are often overlooked during relief times following ceasefire periods, much to the frustration of campaigners. The invisible threats are often overshadowed by much more immediate physical warfare like bombs and gunfire, despite the fact that they can also cause fatal harm. This fact is highlighted in the piece titled ‘2°4′355″N 5°3′23″E’ by Algerian artist Ammar Bouras. Employing eyewitness accounts, this film records the events leading up to and following the Béryl incident of 1962, in which a nuclear test carried out by France in the Algerian desert near In Ekker resulted in improperly sealed underground passages. Follow up studies predominantly paid attention to the French officials and soldiers affected by the radioactivity, yet Bouras illuminates the untold narrative of the native inhabitants whose lives, livelihoods, and very land were devastated as an outcome.
The exhibition then transitions into activism with a meticulously researched analysis by Forensic Architecture, an organisation stationed at Goldsmiths, a segment of the University of London. They delve into the tear gas deployed during the 2020 protests against racial police brutality in Portland, Oregon. Their video composition monitors the extreme accumulation of tear-gas, far exceeding safety recommendations, and draws awareness to the substantial toxic material production levels catering to certain state control entities.
Tear Gas Tuesday vividly replicates the scene seen in Shot Crowd, painted by the Irish artist Joy Gerrard in 2017. However, it is her brother, John Gerrard, whose artwork is showcased here. His creation, a real-time 3D projection, Dust Storm (Manter, Kansas) 2008, remarkably brings to life the Black Sunday dust storm that occurred across the central plains of America on the 14th of April, 1935. As the harsh aftermath of misjudging the delicate balance between human interventions and nature is chillingly revealed, one can’t help but feel the eerie atmosphere of a horror film. It serves as a stark reminder of how insignificant we are in the face of the grandeur of the Earth’s forces.
A more subtle reflection on similar themes can be found in a petite gallery housing a stunning temporal contrast. Known for his dramatic landscapes, famous painter JMW Turner presents The Lake, Petworth, Sunrise, from 1827-8. But there’s more behind these majestic skies than just the Romantic painter’s brilliance. In fact, three enormous volcanic eruptions over two decades, beginning with Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 played a significant role. This biggest recorded eruption resulted in a severe ash cloud, which led to “the year without a summer”, during which harvest failed, causing starvation and consequently death. The striking sunrises and sunsets persisted for over a decade due to the lingering atmospheric pollution.
The exhibition’s text, available for visitors on arrival at Imma, reveals a sobering fact: “Air pollution, both indoor and outdoor, claims an estimated seven million lives annually”. Complementing this space is the 2019 piece Sun[set] Provisioning by Yuri Pattison, a powerful, technologically-infused installation that includes an atomic clock, computer systems, a screen and sensors. Pattison, also featured at the Pumphouse at Dublin Port, designed this system to capture local pollution data and visually interpret it into conceptual sunsets, where the higher pollution levels correspond to more vivid colours.
Despite the intensity of the collection, the more tranquil, contemplative works of Take a Breath may appear somewhat overshadowed. Notably, the golden Meditation Paintings of Patrick Scott seem less impactful when displayed beside Maria Hassabi’s golden mirrored benches. These benches, remnants of a dual performance conducted two months back, give an impression of being salvaged from a wealthy tycoon’s beach residence rather than symbolising the act of breathing in and out. Also, the large-scale minimalist artwork by Waqas Khan, purported to “rise above spatial boundaries,” may require more than a hallway display to accomplish this.
The exhibit incorporates the Tambora eruption in an event timeline, an element where the curatorial staff of Imma excels, as demonstrated by the Self-Determination exhibition of the previous year. It is impressively researched and extremely lucid, being almost parabolic in its narrative of myopic confrontations and greed. Starting with the Industrial Revolution, it documents the rise of industry and trade alongside their ecological and social repercussions. It includes warfare and developments in deadly chemical weaponry, tracing their influence in the arenas of art and literature. Moving through more conflicts, hazardous industrial incidents, and natural calamities, the timeline culminates with the inaugural UN Earth Day in 1970 and the US Clean Air Act, illustrating the unending concessions and compromises even after more than fifty years.
In 2014, the timeline introduces a novel strand – “I can’t breathe” emerges as the rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement, originally spoken by Eric Garner, the victim of a deadly chokehold by a New York policeman. In 2023, Austrian artist Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski presents ‘Respire (Liverpool),’ a tri-screen video work which depicts a group of black individuals exhaling into red balloons. This visual prop emphasises the delicate balance of breathing, while the artwork as a whole introduces an understated solemnity.
The symbolism of the red balloon and its link to the value of breath brings to light Piero Manzoni’s work titled Artist’s Breath from 1960, despite its absence from this exhibit. Manzoni, an Italian artist, would inflate his red balloons and sell them for 200 lire, approximately €3 in today’s exchange, for each litre of air it contained. He once commented, “Each time I inflate a balloon, it is like I am pouring my soul into a vessel achieving immortality.” He passed away at a relatively young age of 30, leaving behind remnants of his once full of life balloons cherished by collectors to this date.
The exhibition boasts a plethora of moving, captivating and sporadically frustrating pieces. Marina Abramovic finds herself at a loss for words, Ana Mendieta employs her breath to displace rocks, while symbols Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe produces abstract symbols inspired by his Yanomami roots, portraying the flora, fauna, air, and water in his home, the Amazon Rain forest lying at the Venezuela and Brazil border. The late Khadija Saye is remembered through enigmatic photographs exploring her Gambian roots following her demise in the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017.
Visitors need time and space to drown out the boisterous voices of artists and their artwork touching upon the immediate and pressing necessity for survival-level breath and the desperate pleas in favour of our toxified planet. This is necessary to cope with the subtler pieces that still aspire for universality. This is nothing short of a reflection of the struggle faced by eco-conscious individuals who ponder upon the planet’s future welfare. The noise surrounding the crisis must be addressed for our survival, but for everyday existence, it may occasionally need to be toned down.
As I emerge from the absorbing experience, I am profoundly moved and haunted by the melancholia and by the poignant sounds of Susan Hiller’s exceptional work, The Last Silent Movie from 2007. Immerse yourself in front of a dark screen, engaging with Hiller as she explores vanishing and threatened languages worldwide. These hushed sounds in the air like spectres through history, are sometimes rough field tapes, some salvaged from archaic language lessons. The on-screen English interpretations deliver messages as the Silbo Gomero whistlings resonate across forsaken valleys, prodding someone not to forget their castanets for the event. It brings to mind a line from Nightwalker by Thomas Kinsella which says, “A dying language echoes / Across a century’s silence,” and the enormous yet often overlooked fortune of simply being alive and breathing.
The exhibition, Take a Breath, is on display at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, until the 17th of March, 2025. Work by Yuri Pattison can be seen at the Pumphouse, at Dublin Port until the 27th of October.