Gordon Parks Gallery

Photography, video, and sound installation are combined by noted Minnesota-based artist Melissa Borman in her engaging, immersive, and poignant presentation about the importance of breathing in our lives.

Breathing is an indicator of one’s current embodied condition and is a fundamental human function that we often take for granted. The act of taking a breath; of inhaling and exhaling is more than functional. It is also a powerful metaphor for life and death. Breathing is often automatic, so when it is inhibited or strained it becomes a conscious act and makes us acutely aware of our existence and interdependence on the environment around us. Embracing these concepts, Borman created a new body of work that envelopes the gallery space. For the artist, breathing is a personal and vulnerable expression of memory, grief, loss, and resilience.

The exhibition is presented as several interwoven sections—video, sound, photography, and a public reading area—creating a multi-sensory, temporal experience. A multi-channel immersive sound work envelopes the viewer through delicate audio and the large, nuanced narrative of the projection draws one into the space. The reading area includes an additional sound work (on headphones) and several publications, which underscore Borman’s research-based practice.

Six large photographs offer quiet moments of reflection amid the immersive soundscape. The artist explains the nuanced interplay between the photographs and immersive space. “Titled Broken Hart, Bed, Page, Next, Black Dog, and Rest, each image distills themes of loss, grief, rest, and resilience into a single, contemplative frame. Dead wasps rest on a floral plate, a bird lies motionless on a patterned pillowcase, a fragile deer figurine bears the weight of its broken antlers—each subject a meditation on absence and memory. These photographs function as visual breaths, punctuating the intangible flow of sound with grounded, tangible echoes of mortality. As the sonic composition Song highlights the negative space of the voice, these images trace the fragile line between presence and absence, inviting viewers to pause and consider the weight of what remains.” – Melissa Borman

Curated by Dr. Megan Arney Johnston, the approach was to work closely with the artist to create a new body of work and facilitating new avenues of making. The aim was to curate a space that envelopes the viewer in time with emotive sounds and visual experiences. The curation was cognizant of aesthetics and how the work is integrated and responds to space, place, and people.

Johnston adds: “The act of breathing is a rhythmic touchpoint to the world and to others. In this way it is a somatic experience. Borman also offers the viewer an emotive experience. The new body of work is an exchange, a moment of intimacy, a conduit for acceptance and offering up, and a possible site of physical and psychological communication. This creative inquiry reflects artistic vulnerability, a conceptual sophistication, and a highly technical process.”

The exhibit opens with a reception from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 17. The show will continue through June 21. Gallery hours are 1 to 7 p.m., Monday through Thursday and Saturday 11am – 5pm. The gallery is located on the first floor of the Library and Learning Center, 645 East Seventh Street, at the university’s Saint Paul Campus.

For more information about the exhibit, contact Dr Megan Arney Johnston, Interim gallery director, at 651.999.5942 or megan.johnston@metrostate.edu.