Kinship and Contingency: Encounters with the Past at Kerlin and IMMA in Dublin, Ireland

Kerlin Gallery

In the stillness of Kerlin Gallery, between the measured light and shadow of silver gelatin prints, two different meditations on time and return played out: Gerard Byrne’s The Struggle With the Angel and the book launch of Dorothy Cross’ Kinship. Though distinct in approach — one a photographic investigation into the quiet ambiguity of place and presence, the other a years-long restitution project returning an Egyptian mummy to its homeland — both projects interrogate our relationship to the past, the archives we create, and the bodies we navigate through them.

Byrne’s ongoing series, begun in 2008, assembles a diaristic accumulation of hand-printed silver gelatin photographs. Their titles, merely a sequence of numbers, suggest an empirical detachment, yet the images themselves are rich with ephemeral intimacy. The locations — often deliberately obscured — render the global into something curiously indistinct, as if dissolving geography in favor of mood. A photograph of Tokyo flattens into an unexpectedly drab skyline, its atmosphere resonating more with the monotony of an unremarkable downtown Dallas than with the hyper-specificity of an Asian metropolis.

The black-and-white compositions, shot on a Mamiya 7, possess a slightly off-kilter framing, an effect of the rangefinder’s imprecision. This introduces a subtle sense of drift — as if the images were not fully in the photographer’s control or as if each frame were a serendipitous accident rather than an act of strict intention. Byrne acknowledges this, reflecting on his relationship with the camera as both a tool and an unreliable accomplice. The Mamiya 7, he notes, lacks autofocus, resists close-ups, and forces the photographer into a particular relationship with distance — not too close, but never too far. These photographs, culled from years of “test rolls” and travel fragments, ultimately form what Byrne calls a “circumstance.” They do not amount to a singular thesis but rather a constellation of peripheral moments, each one hovering between the arbitrary and the profound.

While Byrne’s exhibition fixates on the impermanence of fleeting observation, Dorothy Cross’ Kinship operates on a grander, more symbolic scale — charting the prolonged, bureaucratic, and poetic effort to return a stolen body to its origins. Cross, long fascinated by maritime histories and bodies in transit, traces the remarkable journey of an Egyptian mummy that had been hidden under floorboards, misplaced, restored, and eventually stored in a university warehouse for over a decade.

The project’s ambition mirrors her past works, such as Ghostship (1999), in which a phosphorescent-painted lightship haunted Dublin Bay like a spectral afterimage of history, or Heartship (2019), where a preserved human heart symbolized the thousands lost in Mediterranean crossings. Kinship, however, is grounded in the specifics of restitution: an act of literal and symbolic homecoming. The book collects essays from various writers, each grappling with themes of migration, loss, and the uncanny intimacy of holding the past in one’s hands. Cross recounts how she initially imagined a seaborne return, envisioning the mummy’s passage across the Bay of Biscay and the Strait of Gibraltar, an echo of contemporary refugee routes. Ultimately, the body was flown home, its journey dictated by logistical constraints rather than poetic ideals.

Together, Byrne and Cross propose two lenses on how we encounter the past: one through the accumulation of private, near-anonymous glimpses, the other through a public, ceremonial act of return. Where Byrne’s photographs sidestep grand narratives in favor of a loosely associative archive, Cross insists on the weight of historical responsibility. Both projects, however, ask the same question: what does it mean to hold onto something — whether a moment, an image, or a body — and what happens when we finally let it go?

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Take a Breath, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Gallery 2, June 14, 2024 – March 17, 2025

In an era where the act of breathing has become both a political statement and a contested right, Take a Breath at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin brings together a collection of works that interrogate breath as both a physical necessity and a potent metaphor. The exhibition situates breathing within a matrix of historical violence, environmental devastation, political resistance, and spiritual endurance, exploring how the simple act of inhaling and exhaling underpins everything from personal identity to global power structures. The curatorial framework is as expansive as its subject matter, drawing in works that traverse contemporary and historical concerns, merging scientific historiography with poetic abstraction.

The exhibition’s wall text anchors the show within the recent urgency surrounding breath — pandemic-induced respiratory crises, racial justice protests, and an increasing awareness of air pollution’s geopolitical dimensions. Achille Mbembe’s notion of the “universal right to breathe” resonates throughout the galleries, positioning breath as a shared yet precarious human experience. The show ultimately suggests that breath is not just a bodily function, but an index of freedom, oppression, and ecological interconnectivity.

A core theme of the exhibition is Breath as Language, where Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Air Conditioning (2022) deconstructs the idea of air as an occupied space. Hamdan’s work is rooted in forensic listening and the politics of sound, but here he extends his practice into a visual rendering of what he terms “atmospheric violence.” The work maps 15 years of Israeli military sonic occupation over Lebanon, making tangible the unseen but deeply felt impact of UAV surveillance and sonic warfare. While Hamdan’s forensic aesthetic is well-known in the sphere of investigative art, its inclusion here underscores the exhibition’s broader aim of visualizing breath as something beyond the personal — a space of political contestation.

Similarly, Hajra Waheed’s Studies for A Sound Chamber 1-9 (2023) takes breath into the realm of notation and abstraction, using ink on paper to suggest the visuality of sound and breath. Waheed’s work, positioned near Hamdan’s, invites comparisons: how do we mark breath? Is it reducible to notation, or does it escape representation? The proximity of these works suggests that while breath can be translated into visual terms, its ineffability remains central to its power.

The exhibition does not shy away from breath’s historical weight, particularly in relation to environmental destruction and colonial violence. Ammar Bourras’s 24°3’55”N 5°3’23”E (2012, 2017, 2022) revisits the 1962 Beryl incident, a nuclear test conducted by the French in the Algerian desert. The work excavates the chemical instrumentation of the mid-20th century, foregrounding the enduring toxicity of such events. The consequences of industrial exploration, atomic explosions, and petrochemical extraction remain embedded in landscapes long after their initial detonation. Bourras’s focus on breath here is spectral — tracing the way toxic remnants persist in the air, haunting generations long after the official end of colonial rule.

The historical scope of the exhibition expands further with an expansive timeline tracking air pollution from the 1760s to the present. This rotunda-like installation maps the intersections of industrial output, wildfire events, and modern emissions, reinforcing the exhibition’s assertion that breath is not just a bodily function but an historical record of human impact on the planet.

The bodily dimension of breath takes center stage in Ana Mendieta’s Burial Pyramid (1974), a key work in the exhibition. Mendieta’s earth-body sculptures often situate the body in direct conversation with nature, and here, breath becomes an index of endurance. The artist’s body, buried beneath layers of stone and earth, is not just covered but incorporated into the landscape. Her breathing becomes an act of resistance and survival, demonstrating how breath, struggle, and bodily presence are inextricably linked.

Niamh McCann’s shhh… I fuar anocht beanna boirche (2023) situates breath within linguistic and mythical frameworks. The work, a neon installation incorporating Ogham punctuation, references “Buile Suibhne” — the Irish tale of a man transformed into a bird-human hybrid, exiled to the edges of his homeland. Here, breath is rendered as both physical discomfort and longing — a deep connection to the land that persists even in exile. The glowing text suggests a whisper, a sigh, a fragment of speech suspended in space, reinforcing the idea that breath is both material and ephemeral.

Contemporary explorations of breath’s intersection with technology feature prominently, particularly in works like Yuri Pattison’s Sun[set] Provisioning (2019). This generative software piece incorporates environmental sensors and an atomic clock, creating a real-time interaction with atmospheric conditions. Similarly, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s Respire (Liverpool) (2023) examines how racialized bodies experience breath differently. The three-screen video installation underscores how Black breath has been historically devalued, gesturing toward both historical and contemporary violence against Black bodies. Here, breath is a site of struggle, a contested space where systemic inequalities play out.

Take a Breath is a deeply ambitious exhibition that successfully bridges the political, historical, and poetic dimensions of breath. The inclusion of both technologically driven works and historically rooted investigations creates a rich dialogue across time and media. While breath is a universal human experience, the exhibition reminds us that not all breaths are equal — some are criminalized, some are poisoned, and some are fought for. Yet, amid this stark reality, the show also presents breath as a site of resilience, intimacy, and connection.

IMMA’s curators have crafted an exhibition that is as rigorous as it is evocative, one that lingers in the mind long after leaving the galleries. In an age where the ability to breathe freely cannot be taken for granted, Take a Breath is a necessary, urgent, and deeply moving meditation on what it means to exist in a world where every inhale and exhale carries weight.

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William Sarradet is the Assistant Editor for Glasstire.