Sophie Dupont: Marking Breath

About

From 05:57am-08:02pm on Saturday 18 April the artist will mark into a silver panel each breath she takes, drawing our attention to the simple yet fundamental action of breathing. Requiring an extraordinary degree of restraint and endurance, Dupont sits silently during the entire performance in order to enter a deep state of meditative drawing.

Accompanying the live performance will be a display of panels created by the artist during previous iterations of the work. Varying in scale and material – including copper, zinc and gold – these marked panels are acts of affirmation; relics of the artist's bodily occupation of a given time and place.

Dupont works mainly with performance and painting to examine respiration, body weight, balance and movement. Begun in 2011, she has proceeded to perform Marking Breath in a number of locations including The Armory Fair, New York; The Dominican Republic Performance Festival; SOMA, Mexico City; Gallery Factory, Seoul; Forma Y Sustancia, San Salvadore and most recently at Frost Art Museum, Miami. For the presentation in London Dupont will make the performance participatory and welcomes visitors to sit and join her in the ritual.

Sophie Dupont (b.1975, Denmark) received an MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and has studied Contemporary Dance at London Contemporary Dance School (The Place). Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China; Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin; Den Frie, Copenhagen; The Frost Art Museum and FIU, Miami; The Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde, Denmark and SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico. She lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Marking Breath is supported by the Embassy of Denmark, London