Sophie Dupont – BREATHE

Holstebro Kunstmuseum and Sorø Kunstmuseum have in close collaboration across the country invited visual artist Sophie Dupont (DK, born 1975) to create a total installation for the whole family. The result is the exhibition BREATHE, which focuses on sensation, contemplation and the active participation of the audience. Sophie Dupont has in recent years particularly made a name for herself as a performance artist, but here she unfolds in a different format in her largest museum exhibition to date.

BREATHE focuses on air – our common source of life, which we share through breathing. The air carries both scents and atmospheric phenomena such as wind, rain and thunder with it. And it can move us, both physically and mentally.

Today - air, like many other earthly elements, is politicised. Polluted cities, increasing pollen counts and airborne laboratory viruses threaten our existence. 

And in a time of increased body awareness, where we become more and more isolated behind screens, and where human presence is reduced to “contacts” in an accelerating and “untouchable society” (Byung-Chul Han) controlled by fear of failing and of not living up to the expectations of the outside world, breathing also becomes political: Are we still allowed to breathe?

Fear settles in our breathing, we become short of breath and get the feeling that the breath gets stuck in our throats. The air never reaches the body and we lose the feeling of freedom and freedom of action.

In Sophie Dupont’s artistic practice, the living rhythm of the breath creates new worlds. Worlds that connect us – both with ourselves and with each other. Her wish is for the breath to have a liberating potential. A kind of opportunity space, where you recognise and understand yourself in a different way, and where the boundaries between the individual and the collective become more yielding.

In practice, BREATHE includes spatial sculptures, video and meditative scent and sound installations, where the accompanying instructions of the work signs sharpen our attention to the elementary human sensations. In that sense, the works in the exhibition assume the character of a kind of series of exercises. A wind device generates the sensation of rushing wind; a subtle fragrance activates our sense of smell; and the microphones in the middle of the room hang from the ceiling as an open invitation to express your feeling through breath – whatever it may be. The videos feature a series of performers who go through a range of emotions and whose breathing movements in certain sequences are enhanced through video manipulation using a visual method based on physiological research.

Sophie Dupont herself uses the term “collective sculpture” for her artistic practice and she invites both local citizens and the audience to become co-creators of the exhibition. In BREATHE, we are allowed to draw in the air around us in full. Through the breath, we get space to touch and be touched. Maybe we have forgotten what it feels like to stop and take a deep breath?

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive monographic publication, published by Strandberg Publishing. It documents and puts Sophie Dupont’s artistic projects from 2018 to the present day into perspective and contains articles by Sanne Kofod Olsen, Anouska Kobus, Malthe Brændholt Sørensen, Vanini Belarmino, Mathias Kryger and Alice Godwin.

In addition, the book contains an extract from an interview with Sophie Dupont conducted by Julia Palmeirao, and finally a series of autobiographical sketches in diary form. The book is edited by Marianne Krogh and published mid-2026.

BREATHE is part of the exhibition series with the collective title “SANS! Nye verdener” (“SENSE! New worlds”) - a museum collaboration established based on a vision to create engaging exhibitions that, with current topics and the significant potential of contemporary art, stimulate both children, young people and generally curious art visitors to think new and critically. And preferably based on seductive visual and tactile universes that appeal to both sensation and reflection.

BREATHE is presented at Sorø Kunstmuseum during the period: 3 July – 18 October, 2026.

^{Exhibition views, photo: Sofus Graae}