Exhale And Inhale

Inhale-Exhale, 2019
Oil and Gold Powder on canvas and wall

Wilfrid Israel Museum of Asian Art, Kibbutz HaZorea, Israel, 2020

Curator: Shir Meller -Yamaguchi

"The rhythm of my breathing determines the pace of the painting"

Miriam Cabessa’s breathing paintings are another chapter in her ongoing examination of the body as a painting tool. The work presented here touches on the space between inhaling and exhaling, between the wall and the canvas. It is a continues reverberation that shifts between the radiating gold and the dark depths of the black background. In early 2019, Cabessa stayed at a temporary residence in Brooklyn, where she painted over its walls in brushstrokes that followed the rhythm of her breaths. “The rhythm of my breathing determined the pace of the painting,” she says. “The air that entered the body and filled the space inside me was exhaled and mixed with the space outside me. My painting/body gesture, which is essentially infinite, is painted on the world, mixing domains, overriding boundaries, unifying the illusory with the tangible.”