Sarah Brahim b. 1992

How can I reach you?, Delfina Foundation, London, UK, 2025

At the Delfina Foundation in London, in How can I reach you?, bodies linked to one another by shirts sewn together can only move if they remain attentive to one another. Movement becomes a collective phenomenon grounded in listening, anticipation and constant adjustment. It is not choreographic coordination in the classical sense, but an active interdependence in which each shift engages the whole. The individual body is never dissolved; it is constantly placed in relation and inscribed within a shared dynamic.

Sarah Brahim’s work often starts from the body, but never as an autonomous entity, expressive or performative in a spectacular sense. The body appears as an instrument of perception, a threshold from which broader sensible regimes are organised. Video, performance and sound installation aim neither at immersion nor at the illustration of an inner state; they compose situations in which perception shifts, refines and redistributes itself. In most of her video works, particularly those shown at the Bally Foundation in Lugano, the body becomes a unit for measuring time. Gestures are minimal, precise and almost ascetic; they seek neither expressivity nor narrative, but establish an extended temporality in which each micro-variation matters. Movement does not progress toward a goal; it persists. Time does no flow linearly but dilates, folds back and becomes perceptible in its tiniest fluctuations. The viewer is compelled to slow down, adjust attention and place themselves at the scale of micro-perception. This extreme attention to perceptual thresholds runs through her practice as a whole. Breath, respiration, walking and dance steps become full materials in their own right. Respiration, in particular, occupies a central place: it links the body to its immediate environment, but also to a wider, atmospheric space that is almost cosmic. The performances extend and intensify this research. 

NEUMA, The Forgotten Ceremony, Residency at Villa Hegra, Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, January 30 - Februay 27 2025

Sarah Brahim and Ugo Schiavi present the results of their collaborative project, NEUMA, The Forgotten Ceremony. This installation marks the culmination of their residency at Villa Hegra. Imagined as a symbolic gesture paying tribute to the ritual practices of the pre-Islamic tribes of AlUla, this installation by Brahim et Schiavi is the result of in-depth research carried out in close collaboration with archaeologists and local communities across the region. Drawing inspiration from the landscape of AlUla, its mythology and heritage, this exhibition fosters a contemplative mood by subtly blending contemporary creation, elements of the site’s ancient history, as well as temporal and spiritual elements across an ensemble of sculptures, videos, photography commissions and a performative activation.

A series of handcrafted blown glass sculptures—shaped to reiterate the contours of AlUla's geology and its metamorphosis—are presented in a scenography evoking an archaeological reserve. These glass vessels, evocative of relics from a forgotten era or a speculative past, become ceremonial and ritualistic objects when activated by the breath of performers. Neuma, the “vital breath” in classical thought, finds its physical embodiment in these works, where the earthly body and breath appear entwined with the celestial body and the soul. For Aristotle, ”pneuma” (πνεῦμα) was regarded as the animating principle of life. Transcending the individual in Stoic thought, “pneuma” became the divine breath of the cosmos. With this proposition, the artists portray breath as the pulse of existence, the soul as an unseen current — flowing through spaces where form and meaning meet. Curated by Wejdan Reda and Arnaud Morand.

Soft Machines / Far Away Engines, Diriyah Biennale, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 11 December 2021 – 11 March 2022

Soft Machines/Far Away Engines is an 8 channel performance film with sound commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation 2021. Exhibited at 16th Lyon Biennale 2022. In the choreographic essay Soft Machines/Far Away Engines, Brahim interpolates video, installation, sound, and performance to impart a sense of transcendence. Portraying a universe in which the human body is a vessel of memory, a site of transformation, and a vehicle of communication, timed projections appear on panels that can be seen either separately or as a single choreographic composition. These panels serve as a structure to move throughout the space, with the position of the observer determining their perception of the immersive performance. The work incorporates a series of games, tasks, research and improvisations that represent the trajectory of movement through the body from internal to external.

Beginning with the breath as the most ancient movement memory residing in the body, and tracking its internal intimate motion recognizing each body in the works breath as an evidence of the first breath or first life. As motion moves through the body to its border there must be a point where it breaks through and is now a part of the social body, the transmission from a single body to a common territory. Soft Machines and Far Away Engines creates a symbolic space where futures are performed through voicing and embodiment while searching to connect and evolve in a constant state of becoming. The film depicts planned as well as spontaneous motions that oscillate between individual and group gestures, emphasizing curiosity, sensation, and the transmission of energy through movement. Veering between moments of introspection and transcendence, Brahim reveals in real time how the human figure can metamorphose into light, image, sound, and back again.