Inhale | Exhale was a performance created in collaboration with Kyivian dancer Dayana Mankovska, and presented as part of Jessica Ostrowicz’s solo exhibition The Inhale Before. Moving slowly through the museum, the performers activated the space by leaving a wake of twenty-one stones behind them. Each stone marked a lost life. As Mankovska danced, stones were placed carefully upon her body. Their weight altered and guided her movement, becoming small shifts, pauses, and adjustments emerging in response to the burden she carried. When a stone fell, it was placed gently on the ground in her wake, forming a quiet trail through the hall.

The performance lingered within the suspended moment suggested by its title: the inhale held just before something changes. It dwelt in the space where grief has not yet found its place to settle. As the path of stones accumulated, the work asked a simple, unresolved question: where do we put our grief down?

Produced and documented by Yevheniia Havrylenko