It is a visual reflection on the poetry of life contained in the rhythm of our breaths. The impulse for its creation was a deeply felt strong experience of looking for a breath with a gesture of stretched fingers in the motionless body of someone very close to me, whom I took care of. Every day, putting my fingers against her nose, I checked if she was still breathing and if life was closing in her body. The strong emotions I felt at that time led me to reflect upon the poetic quality of such an apparently prosaic and involuntary process as breathing. I materialised my thoughts by creating an enigmatic machine that generates the continuous movement of the warm air and friction forming a rhythmic sound with the pace of breathing. It is both an instrument and a metronome marking the rhythm of cyclic life.

 

The whole installation is complemented by a two-channel video – two scaled images in dialogue with each other, two faces of women situated on the opposite poles of life: an 18-year-old and a 86-year-old. They are captured in a gesture of half-open eyes and suspended between blissful sleep and acute awareness – a gesture that culminates at the moment of looking at each other.

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The installation was a diploma thesis defended at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, it was created in the studio of spatial activities of prof. Roman Woźniak. The work was awarded a distinction and was presented at the prestigious exhibition "UpComing2021 - the best diplomas of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw" (Czapski Palace, Warsaw, 2021)