The Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, is one of the largest art museums in the country. The art museum, which consists of three separate buildings built in 1869, 1921 and 1997, also hosts multiple exhibitions.
Atmen
The exhibition “Atmen” (Breathing), which met with the audience on September 30, 2022, continued to meet with the audience until February 12 ¾ extending the planned closing date by 1 month. “Atmen” is inspired by the pandemic and the “Black Lives Matter” movement that emerged in 2020 in the US after George Floyd was killed in police custody. The exhibition in Hamburg refers to the present day and shows how the view of breathing has changed in the visual arts. It is the first major exhibition in the world to be based on the theme of breathing in the art of the old masters and contemporary art.
Over 100 works by around 45 artists from 18 countries interpret the theme of “breathing” on a sociopolitical and global level and communicate across the ages. The interdisciplinary artistic mediums on display range from painting, sculpture and installation to photography and drawing, performance, video, film and sound works. Breathing has been thought of as more than just air moving in and out of the body since ages ago. Breath is the vehicle of life, thought, inspiration and, in many world cultures, the spirit. We often take breathing for granted in our daily lives. We pay attention when breathing becomes difficult due to illness, climate change, epidemics or physical violence. George Floyd’s last words in 2020, “I can’t breathe”, have become almost synonymous with racist and institutional violence. Breathing, which we inhale and exhale an average of 22,000 times a day, always has sociopolitical implications beyond this vital function. At various levels, breathing involves owning the air and the environment, both socially and politically. It radically questions how we relate to the world and each other. This has become particularly visible in the days of the global pandemic, when one’s own breath and the breath of others becomes a source of contagion and a potentially deadly threat.
“The Breathing” exhibition invites visitors to approach and question this multifaceted theme from different angles. It draws our attention to this theme, which we do not stop and pay attention to in our daily lives, and which perhaps seems very simple when we think about it. It is possible to see another exhibition similar to the “Atmen” exhibition, “Transparent Museum”, which draws the viewer in and includes the viewer in many works, again at the Hamburg Kunsthalle.
