One of the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic was to contribute to an awareness of the importance of respiratory activity and its impact on personal and social well-being. Berlin-based artist Tiny Domingos’ first solo exhibition in the United States takes its title from a collection of poems published in 1967 that evoke both breathing and a reversal of situation: BREATHTURN (ATEMWENDE in its original version). Its author is Paul Celan, a poet who, refusing all labels and taking unexpected paths, succeeded in a challenge that many (like Adorno) considered impossible: to revive the poetic language shattered by the Holocaust. Today, as the War in Ukraine plunges us back into a time-space that seemed to be over, another challenge – equally impossible in appearance and not unrelated to this conflict – arises before us: to face the brutal collapse to which the climate crisis, soil deterioration and mass extinction are leading. The very conditions of habitability of the planet are at stake. Once again, it is a matter of life and death.
