The body records what the psyche cannot express. Our wounds, whether or not they leave visible scars, shape the way we move through the world. Beneath the ribcage lies a powerful organ, capable of supporting and regulating us through a ritual of returning to the body; at other times, it can feel so heavy and constricted that it limits our ability to act.
The central, visceral action of Breathing From Within (2026) is the gradual inflation of this printed skin, driven entirely by the rhythm of the artist’s own breathing.
Keeping the body intact becomes a Sisyphean task: a fragile attempt to preserve its volume, where volume corresponds directly to vitality, to the simple capacity to exist. This movement represents the unavoidable daily labour endured by a wounded soul.
By positioning the monitor horizontally on a metal tray, the installation deliberately evokes the cold, clinical perspective of an autopsy table. No longer a private refuge, the body becomes an object subjected to surgical observation, echoing the exposure experienced by a vulnerable soul simply moving through the world.
Through staged photography, the artist creates new objects that simulate bodily forms, combining sculpture with tactile materials and attaching them directly to her own body. She follows an intuitive, embodied process, examining the textures of materials to convey the soul’s inner estrangement. By transforming her skin into rigid or elastic forms, photography enables her to enter more safely into the once-forbidden ambiguity of somatic instability.
Lael Reiss (b. 1992) is an Israeli-born artist based in London, where she is completing a master’s degree in Photography at the Royal College of Art. Her work combines photography, sculpture and material experimentation to examine the body and skin as thresholds between the soul and the external world.
Through theatrical, tactile photography and the use of manipulated materials, Reiss deconstructs her own body to express a sense of inner estrangement. An award-winning artist, her distinctions include the Gold Award for Photography from the London Contemporary Art Review.
Text by Silvia Laurelli