Saeed Gebaan
NAFAS
Nafas emerged from a research project that began during the Al-Balad Artist Residency in Jeddah in 2019.
What started as a curiosity about the city’s dialect gradually evolved into an investigation of how a shared culture can emerge among people of profoundly different ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds.
Through synchronized breathing and living movement, the installation transforms this invisible process of collective formation into a living spatial experience.
Commissioned for the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025 ·
First presented at the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025 Western Hajj Terminal, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia ·
Curated by Muhannad Shono ·
Courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation,
photo: Marco Cappelletti ·
photo: Ginevra Formentini.
THE WORK
Golden filaments hang from the ceiling, at rest in the form of a dome. Then air enters them. They expand and contract in synchronized cycles hundreds of them, of differing lengths, breathing together. Each has its own length, its own contours that never repeat; no two filaments are alike. And still the cycle does not break: all inhale at once, all exhale at once. Standing beneath them, one sees the difference entire, and hears a single rhythm. Breath is the one thing every human body does the same way, whatever its language, its ethnicity, its origin. It requires no learning, admits no translation, and is not disputed. And in a city like Jeddah, people arrived from the ends of the earth carrying languages, traditions, and memories that nothing held together and gathered around a single center, performing the same movements. None of them agreed to make a shared culture. Yet one formed. Across generations of repeated movement, a common rhythm emerged that did not erase difference, but carried it. The filaments are gold because what took shape in that city is rare: a union no one planned, no one intended, and which arrived unique all the same. Gold here is not ornament it is the worth of what happened without being asked for. And at rest, when the air withdraws, the filaments return to the form of a dome. A shape known to anyone who has ever stood in a gathering ... the geometry of assembling around a center.
SPATIAL EXPERIENCE
Visitors enter a suspended field of slowly breathing forms that expand and contract in synchronized cycles.
Standing beneath the installation, they experience the surrounding space as though it inhales and exhales collectively.
The movement unfolds gradually, encouraging contemplation rather than spectacle and allowing invisible rhythms to become physically perceptible through movement, air, and time.
DEVELOPMENT
Although the installation appears effortless, its movement relies on a pneumatic system I developed specifically for it.
I calibrated the air pressure, programmed the control systems, synchronized the valves, tested the structure, and experimented with materials, refining this through numerous prototypes until I reached a stable collective breathing cycle.
The golden filaments are formed into elongated shapes, each with its own length and contours, so that no two are ever quite alike just as each culture remained visible within the blend.
These distinct forms breathe together in a single rhythm, so that difference and union are present at once.
The engineering intentionally disappears behind the experience, allowing movement itself to become the primary language of the work.
CLOSING STATEMENT
Nafas reflects on the invisible processes through which communities gradually become more than the sum of their individuals. It proposes that collective identity is shaped not only by language or heritage, but through generations of shared belief, repeated movement, and common practice, where diversity remains visible while a single rhythm quietly holds the whole together.
MATERIALS
- Suspended structure: Four concentric steel rings (largest 4 m in diameter), bent and welded steel pipes, ceiling suspension hooks.
- Golden elements: Expandable rubber hoses (latex core, woven polyester casing), hand-sewn golden fabric sleeves, brass-gold end caps.
- Pneumatic system: Screw air compressor with dryer, filters and tank, brass quick-connectors, inlet and outlet solenoid valves with mufflers, pneumatic solenoid valve block, compressed air.
- Control: PLC with analog and digital expansion cards, pressure sensors and pressure switches, electrical control panel, industrial wiring and connectors.
Dimensions: 800 cm (height) × 400 cm (diameter)