Chaque souffle une danse
Lee Mingwei
In Lee Mingwei’s Chaque souffle une danse, a series of alabaster slabs with the artist’s ‘breath drawings’ are placed atop of tripod-like stands arranged in a swirling constellation. As the artist developed a practice of breathing exercises to cope with the emotional burden of escalating global discord, he simultaneously developed a practice of breath drawing, which took place over an extended period of time at dusk: ‘The drawing would emerge from several sustained, contemplative breaths that distributed ink over the surface. Each one thus assumed a distinctive essence, an embodiment of the atmospheric conditions and emotional context inherent at the specific moment of creation.’
Over the course of Artefact’s exhibition and festival, the installation is activated no less than 12 times in a meditative performance of 30 minutes. On these occasions, a performer enters the gallery space and slowly reveals each breath drawing by lighting a candle. In a second movement, light is taken away again, one candle at a time, until the gallery is veiled in darkness. The performance is not merely a companion to the breath drawings but a metaphysical space for reflection, offering viewers a journey through rhythms that punctuate both art and life, a possible contemplation of the symbiosis between opposites, and how one gives meaning to the other.
When not activated, one is invited to take off one’s shoes and approach the installation to witness the breath drawings up close. A large-screen projection conveys how the performance first took place at San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project Foundation. Commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the aforementioned Foundation, it was performed and recorded there as part of Lee Mingwei’s 2024 solo exhibition Rituals of Care at de Young Museum in San Francisco. This presentation in STUK is Chaque souffle une danse’s second iteration and European premiere.
2024 – Performance installation with sumi ink on alabaster slabs (30 x 23 cm), stands and candles, dimension variable.
Design of the display stand i.c.w. Desai Chia Architecture.
Courtesy of the artist
Commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco | de Young
Lee Mingwei
°1964, Taiwan
Born in Taiwan and currently living in Paris, New York and Taipei, LEE Mingwei creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness, and one-on-one events, in which visitors contemplate these issues with the artist through eating, sleeping, walking and conversation. LEE’s projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction and take on different forms with participants' involvement and change during an exhibition. He has held solo exhibitions internationally, including Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco | de Young, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Gropius Bau, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Mori Art Museum, and has been featured in biennales in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Shanghai, Sharjah, Sydney, Whitney, and Asia Pacific Triennials.
Photo: Lee Mingwei Courtesy of LEE Studio photo by Andrew Nian Zhu Lee