Official. Unofficial. Belarus.

The Breath You Hold

Official. Unofficial. Belarus. is an immersive exhibition exploring life in Belarus, today. Confession is transformed into a space of meta-surveillance, where identity is no longer private and its sanctity is revoked. What emerges is a reflection on the contemporary condition of constant visibility and its quiet psychological weight.

Indirectly quoting Foucault, the exhibition aims to “strike the soul” of visitors, transporting them to conformity through scent, sound, and movement. Altar candles release an olfactory composition recalling prison corridors, forged documents and unmarked graves. A soundscape by Olga Podgayskaya stretches liturgical music into near silence, while Taste of Nothing by renowned chef Rasmus Munk (offered at designated times) questions what can be tasted when tomorrow is no longer promised. While the works of Sergey Grinevich, Vladimir Tsesler and Nicolai Khalezin form a defiant continuation of a decades-long practice formed under Soviet artistic censorship.

Rather than offering resolution, the experience leaves visitors with a physical awareness of control, erasure and quiet complicity. What remains is a heightened consciousness of how power enters the body and how freedom begins by noticing the breath you were holding.