Everything brings us back to the body

'Everything brings us back to the body', wrote Achille Mbembe in his 2020 essay The Universal Right to Breathe, written in response to the first COVID-19 lockdowns. That same year, Ehsan Hemat began creating this performance. In it, he explores what the human body can do with an 18-kilo copper plate.

Ehsan draws inspiration from the poetry of Rumi and from Gaia theory. He uses these ideas to play with reflection and echo, shaping a performance in which human and object dance together as equals. Beneath its striking imagery lies a deeper concern: a confrontation with histories of exploitation, ecological disruption, and the universal right to breathe.