The Universe Breathes Us is an artists’ collaboration that takes tidal turbine energy as a model that reveals a physical truth: forces originate from the relations of things, not from things themselves. The exhibition brings together collapsible sculptures, light, sound, film projections, and live performance to create a captivating experience that reflects the invisible, yet vital forces that shape our world.

Experimental music composer Douglas Farrand collaborates with Relational on a sonic piece that is structured by the tide tables of Reykjavík. Composer-musician Alan Duff Berman, along with Dana Berman Duff, has composed a choir piece that emphasizes the relational force that creates breathing, recorded by the renowned Contemporary Choral Collective Los Angeles (C3LA), and will be played on demand in the exhibition for viewers to sing along.

Shirley Tse, born in Hong Kong, is a California-based artist known for her sculptural work exploring place, politics, and ecology. She was the first woman to represent Hong Kong in a solo show at the Venice Biennale (2019). Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Biennale of Sydney, MoMA PS1, and SFMOMA. Her artworks are held in major collections including M+, Hong Kong, the New Museum, New York, and others. Tse has been a long-time faculty member at CalArts and has received awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship and Anonymous Was A Woman Award. Most recently, her work is featured in “Great Women Sculptors,” published by Phaidon.

Dana Berman Duff’s sculptures and drawings are in the collections of MoMA, the New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Phillips Collection. Named a Cultural Trailblazer by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, she has had a retrospective of short films at REDCAT in Disney Concert Hall programmed by Steve Anker. Her films have screened at more than 60 major international festivals, including Toronto, Rotterdam, Geneva’s Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, and Edinburgh. Her film A POTENTIALITY won an Alice Guy award at FIDMarseille 2020. Her video installations include What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, a collaboration with the late Sabina Ott, exhibited in Chicago and Scotland, and Reading Aloud: What Is Power? by Fred Dewey at the Mimesis Film Festival. Duff taught art and experimental film for over three decades at NYU, Bennington, UCLA, Cranbrook, and Otis College of Art, where she founded the Sculpture/New Genres program and co-founded the Public Practice MFA with Suzanne Lacy, and at Art Center College, where she worked with Shirley Tse when Tse was a graduate student.