Breathing unites all beings, from the most microscopic to the most complex. Do buildings breathe too?
For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Simnikiwe Buhlungu presents Progenies of Vented Tubes Elsewhere, 2025, a site-specific adaptation of the long-term project lung time!!! (a conver-something continuum), originally presented in 2024 at Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf.
This version of the work is composed of ventilation ducts that extend from the Pavilion’s ceiling to about 2 meters above the floor, connecting to the building’s circulatory mechanisms. Its ventilation allows various forms of encounter, perception, and listening to unfold within its architecture. At the same time, these metallic tubes allude to the awareness and functioning of a physical structure, as well as to its ability to speak, question, propose, or exist within zones of ambiguity.
Interested in knowledge production—how it is generated, by whom, and in what ways it circulates—Simnikiwe navigates socio-historical and everyday phenomena through such questions and their infinite possibilities of response. In recent projects, she has focused on the challenge of how to know whether something invisible is present among us.
According to the artist, breathing/ventilation are conditions through which phenomena are able to resume/begin/pause/think. Listening can be understood as a form of building research. She also conceives of listening in terms of synthesis, like electronic signals: the fact that when you listen to a song, you perceive it as music, but in fact, you are hearing mathematics, physics.
In this installation, four metal tubes, reaching heights of about five meters, descend from the Pavilion’s ceiling and emerge unexpectedly in the space, bending in distinct curves and angles. As visible extensions of the building’s own physical structure, each tube is connected to an independent system that circulates air at different tempos, producing a syncopated rhythm of breaths, whistles, and pauses.
The tubes are fitted with specially crafted mouthpieces, like those of flutes, and air pumps connected to a musical composition. They function like organ pipes, rhythmically pumping air inside them and drawing in air from the Pavilion’s floor. The sound is amplified and returned to the exhibition space.
The raw steel, initially gray, slowly transforms through contact with the air and the visitors’ breath, taking on shades of rust. This process highlights the material’s vulnerability and the passage of time.
Between sound, architecture, and presence, the installation creates a collective breathing, where human and non-human bodies share the same vital gesture and mutually transform one another.