CORNER DRY LUNGS
Corner Dry Lungs
2024
Hundreds of meters of silver gelatin paper exposed, developed, and rinsed with a black hose, directly in the museum.
Chemicals and water everywhere; on my skirt, on my skin, suede shoes soaked for days and nights –– it’s a mess; this work is about grief and it was a hard one to make.
Corner Dry Lungs – a site-specific process-based photographic installation exhibited at Zollamt MMK Frankfurt, curated by Lukas Flygare and Susanne Pfeffer
exhibition view photographed by Mathilde Agius
Paper. Exposed, developed, not fixed. Rinsed roughly with a hose connected to the toilet, crumpled, temporarily stuffed
in garbage bags, stapled to a wooden support. Wet paper is heavy, like a body. I often think about how my father’s body
was handled after his death. I don’t know.
Dripping silver gelatin paper on slippery slabs, developer smells filling the
air—residue impossible to remove—flipped from horizontal to vertical to cry until dry. And I moved on to the next
piece. I made 56 lungs, 96 black photographs, most of them three meters long.
Corner Dry Lungs was a photographic installation developed directly in the museum in Frankfurt. I make every
exhibition space my territory so that my work can feel at home in it. The only connection I ever had with the city was
my father, who lived there. When he died in 2021, I stopped going. And when I was asked to do the show at MMK last
year, all I felt was a wave of emptiness so suffocating in its powerlessness, I thought I would drown.
The work unfolded like a protocol: death logistics, funeral rituals, burying, reanimating, lacerations, Lazarett—wet
weight, patients, like many patients waiting in a hospital, constellation, consolation, exhaustion of my body (my back
hurts, really hurts) and of the developer. Depleted.
I exposed the photographic paper directly on the museum floor under functional cleaning light. More precisely: I
unrolled it, and it exposed itself. That gesture—the unrolling—was destructive and generative at once: it destroyed any
possibility of conventional photographic use while allowing the emulsion to reveal colors normally hidden in darkroom
practice. The untreated glossy silver gelatin paper shifts from pale lemon to apricot, plum, and steel blue before being
pulled into blackness through chemical force. The paper holds a chemical swell, a physical weight. Wetness becomes
texture. Reflection becomes the form. The more fully developed the work is in its blackness, the more it reflects light—
until the black appears white. This is a core photographic truth: that black is white. The negative holds the positive
with all its potential truths. These reversals are the material ground of my work and speak to the conditions I’m drawn
to: grief and exposure, control and surrender, ritual and collapse. What interests me is not resolution, but how these
opposing forces remain held—impossibly—within a single surface. This is what draws me to Eros, and to the Other. Not
as conceptual figures, but as ways of staying with contradiction. The photograph becomes a body that absorbs, reflects,
resists, and survives. Staples hold the prints in place to dry and retain posture. Nothing in these works is truly fixed—not
the chemistry, not the surface, not the position.
I didn’t want Frankfurt in the room. I covered the windows with mirror foil to block the city—without letting the works
escape from themselves through reflection. The space became a dysfunctional, high-productivity laboratory. For the
exhibition, I left the cleaning lights on. When you die, the world keeps living. That was the hardest part of my father’s
death—the contrast between what I felt and the ongoing routine. Condolences were sent on Instagram between party
stories. Relationships delayed, hoping I’d “finish” my suicidality alone. His death—my pain—was simply inconvenient.
That’s why I left the lights on in the show: for the dignity of grief’s reality. Not dressed up. Not staged. Just the
indifferent, gas station-light mediocrity that surrounds you when tragedy happens, not theater spots.
My working conditions changed over time. At first, I unrolled the paper directly on the museum floor and developed
it with a sponge. The smell was sharp and it took an hour for a single piece. My back gave out. I moved to plastic-
covered tables. Then to cardboard boxes lined with plastic. So much leakage, my lungs hurt. Then to three custom-built
boxes. The developer kept leaking. The buckets filled. The stapling echoed in the empty space. I stayed until sunrise. I
abandoned several developed photographs in garbage bags. Art handlers installed parts of the show during the opening.
I didn’t finish all the works in time. I decided not to. I continued working during the opening, didn’t want to entertain,
explain. I needed to continue. I call this form process: a term for the time-based medium I defined for my practice,
distinct from performance. It emphasizes photographic function-oriented chemical and bodily labor in real time. It
becomes process only once the gesture is opened to the public and titled as such. For the opening at MMK Zollamt, I
titled the active component gesture II – develop.
While the lungs were the most apparent body of work, Contenance evolved alongside them. It began as residue: used
photographic chemicals, contaminated water, buckets, canisters, garbage bags, rubber gloves, plastic sheets, tables.
I left most of them where they had been used. Others were moved. Some molded. Some evaporated. Some couldn’t
survive the duration of the show. I returned several times. At first, I let the space remain exposed. But over time it felt
like a house left uncleaned during depression and I felt shame. I began to gather the remains. The title Contenance is a
double register. In French and English, it suggests composure—keeping it together. That’s what I wished I had when my
father died—not for appearance, but to protect my nervous system from the consequences of my physical overwhelm.
Containment is a kind of shield. And Contenance is also literal: chemical liquids saturated by the process they had
enabled. Once the show had been open for a few months already, I found an old vitrine, reinforced it with epoxy resin,
and poured what could be held into it.
The title Corner Dry Lungs comes from a poem I wrote while trying to put language to my father’s death. I had been
writing prose, but the structure broke. What remained became the poem. I printed it in the color darkroom as an image.
One version appears in my book ROUGH TIDE. Another became the cover of the MMK exhibition booklet. The image
itself was not shown in the exhibition.
My practice in its entirety is held together through leakage, migration, and iterative reactivation. I am not interested in
offering symbols that must be decoded. I am moved by creating unstable systems that must be entered.
in garbage bags, stapled to a wooden support. Wet paper is heavy, like a body. I often think about how my father’s body
was handled after his death. I don’t know.
Dripping silver gelatin paper on slippery slabs, developer smells filling the
air—residue impossible to remove—flipped from horizontal to vertical to cry until dry. And I moved on to the next
piece. I made 56 lungs, 96 black photographs, most of them three meters long.
Corner Dry Lungs was a photographic installation developed directly in the museum in Frankfurt. I make every
exhibition space my territory so that my work can feel at home in it. The only connection I ever had with the city was
my father, who lived there. When he died in 2021, I stopped going. And when I was asked to do the show at MMK last
year, all I felt was a wave of emptiness so suffocating in its powerlessness, I thought I would drown.
The work unfolded like a protocol: death logistics, funeral rituals, burying, reanimating, lacerations, Lazarett—wet
weight, patients, like many patients waiting in a hospital, constellation, consolation, exhaustion of my body (my back
hurts, really hurts) and of the developer. Depleted.
I exposed the photographic paper directly on the museum floor under functional cleaning light. More precisely: I
unrolled it, and it exposed itself. That gesture—the unrolling—was destructive and generative at once: it destroyed any
possibility of conventional photographic use while allowing the emulsion to reveal colors normally hidden in darkroom
practice. The untreated glossy silver gelatin paper shifts from pale lemon to apricot, plum, and steel blue before being
pulled into blackness through chemical force. The paper holds a chemical swell, a physical weight. Wetness becomes
texture. Reflection becomes the form. The more fully developed the work is in its blackness, the more it reflects light—
until the black appears white. This is a core photographic truth: that black is white. The negative holds the positive
with all its potential truths. These reversals are the material ground of my work and speak to the conditions I’m drawn
to: grief and exposure, control and surrender, ritual and collapse. What interests me is not resolution, but how these
opposing forces remain held—impossibly—within a single surface. This is what draws me to Eros, and to the Other. Not
as conceptual figures, but as ways of staying with contradiction. The photograph becomes a body that absorbs, reflects,
resists, and survives. Staples hold the prints in place to dry and retain posture. Nothing in these works is truly fixed—not
the chemistry, not the surface, not the position.
I didn’t want Frankfurt in the room. I covered the windows with mirror foil to block the city—without letting the works
escape from themselves through reflection. The space became a dysfunctional, high-productivity laboratory. For the
exhibition, I left the cleaning lights on. When you die, the world keeps living. That was the hardest part of my father’s
death—the contrast between what I felt and the ongoing routine. Condolences were sent on Instagram between party
stories. Relationships delayed, hoping I’d “finish” my suicidality alone. His death—my pain—was simply inconvenient.
That’s why I left the lights on in the show: for the dignity of grief’s reality. Not dressed up. Not staged. Just the
indifferent, gas station-light mediocrity that surrounds you when tragedy happens, not theater spots.
My working conditions changed over time. At first, I unrolled the paper directly on the museum floor and developed
it with a sponge. The smell was sharp and it took an hour for a single piece. My back gave out. I moved to plastic-
covered tables. Then to cardboard boxes lined with plastic. So much leakage, my lungs hurt. Then to three custom-built
boxes. The developer kept leaking. The buckets filled. The stapling echoed in the empty space. I stayed until sunrise. I
abandoned several developed photographs in garbage bags. Art handlers installed parts of the show during the opening.
I didn’t finish all the works in time. I decided not to. I continued working during the opening, didn’t want to entertain,
explain. I needed to continue. I call this form process: a term for the time-based medium I defined for my practice,
distinct from performance. It emphasizes photographic function-oriented chemical and bodily labor in real time. It
becomes process only once the gesture is opened to the public and titled as such. For the opening at MMK Zollamt, I
titled the active component gesture II – develop.
While the lungs were the most apparent body of work, Contenance evolved alongside them. It began as residue: used
photographic chemicals, contaminated water, buckets, canisters, garbage bags, rubber gloves, plastic sheets, tables.
I left most of them where they had been used. Others were moved. Some molded. Some evaporated. Some couldn’t
survive the duration of the show. I returned several times. At first, I let the space remain exposed. But over time it felt
like a house left uncleaned during depression and I felt shame. I began to gather the remains. The title Contenance is a
double register. In French and English, it suggests composure—keeping it together. That’s what I wished I had when my
father died—not for appearance, but to protect my nervous system from the consequences of my physical overwhelm.
Containment is a kind of shield. And Contenance is also literal: chemical liquids saturated by the process they had
enabled. Once the show had been open for a few months already, I found an old vitrine, reinforced it with epoxy resin,
and poured what could be held into it.
The title Corner Dry Lungs comes from a poem I wrote while trying to put language to my father’s death. I had been
writing prose, but the structure broke. What remained became the poem. I printed it in the color darkroom as an image.
One version appears in my book ROUGH TIDE. Another became the cover of the MMK exhibition booklet. The image
itself was not shown in the exhibition.
My practice in its entirety is held together through leakage, migration, and iterative reactivation. I am not interested in
offering symbols that must be decoded. I am moved by creating unstable systems that must be entered.
rinsed black photographs in garbage bags before being unfolded and stapled on black panels
gesture II – develop
process
27.09.2024
Paper. I exposed it, developed it, did not fix it, rinsed it roughly, and put it in a garbage bag to have it out of the way. It’s very heavy. I crumpled it, took the contaminated paper out of the bag and stapled it onto a support. It was flipped from laying down horizontally to the vertical so the paper would cry till dryness. And I moved on to the next piece. Death logistics, funeral rituals, burying, reanimating, supporting structures, lacerate and Lazarett, patients, like many patients in a hospital, waiting, constellation, consolation, weight, wet, exhaustion of my body – my back hurts, really hurts, – and of the developer.
detail of a lungs, photographed by Mathile Agius
handmade chromogenic print 20.5 cm x 25 cm
2024
handmade chromogenic print 20.5 cm x 25 cm
2024
handmade chromogenic print 20.5 cm x 25 cm
2024
handmade chromogenic print 20.5 cm x 25 cm
2024
handmade chromogenic print 20.5 cm x 25 cm
2024
handmade chromogenic print 20.5 cm x 25 cm
2024
gesture III – index
process
04.11.2024
Each constellation is made of objects bringing their own weight.
With the exception lungs 25 and five lungs laying on the ground in the show,
I photographed each of the 56 lungs after numbering them.
Using a medium-format camera and Portra 160 film,
I documented each piece against a black background with a mirrored foil floor
to reflect the unique topographies of the surfaces. These photographs form an index—both an archive and a continuation of the work.
The process of photographing, developing, and hand-printing each piece in the color darkroom was a time-based action that I define as process—a medium I defined for my practice distinct from performance.
It encompasses deliberate, purposeful acts to achieve a specific outcome, accessible and open to the public.
Each piece retains an individual number, marked from its inception, which will follow it through every future transformation. Whether the photographic objects are wetted, crumpled, re-dried, or re-mounted in new forms, their number remains a constant, preserving their identity. Over the coming years, I will continue to document these transformations, expanding the index as the pieces evolve, allowing their unique skins and lives to be traced.
process
04.11.2024
Each constellation is made of objects bringing their own weight.
With the exception lungs 25 and five lungs laying on the ground in the show,
I photographed each of the 56 lungs after numbering them.
Using a medium-format camera and Portra 160 film,
I documented each piece against a black background with a mirrored foil floor
to reflect the unique topographies of the surfaces. These photographs form an index—both an archive and a continuation of the work.
The process of photographing, developing, and hand-printing each piece in the color darkroom was a time-based action that I define as process—a medium I defined for my practice distinct from performance.
It encompasses deliberate, purposeful acts to achieve a specific outcome, accessible and open to the public.
Each piece retains an individual number, marked from its inception, which will follow it through every future transformation. Whether the photographic objects are wetted, crumpled, re-dried, or re-mounted in new forms, their number remains a constant, preserving their identity. Over the coming years, I will continue to document these transformations, expanding the index as the pieces evolve, allowing their unique skins and lives to be traced.
handmade chromogenic print 20.5 cm x 25 cm
2024
Contenance (table 01)
photographic object, part of a photographic assemblage (used photographic chemicals, contaminated water, buckets, canisters, vitrines, garbage bags, rubber gloves,
plastic sheets, tables)
photographed by Mathilde Agius
photographic object, part of a photographic assemblage (used photographic chemicals, contaminated water, buckets, canisters, vitrines, garbage bags, rubber gloves,
plastic sheets, tables)
photographed by Mathilde Agius
lungs 25
photographic object (silver gelatin paper, chemical residue, wood, paint, staples)
411 cm x 411 cm x 5 cm
2024
photographed by Mathilde Agius
corner dry lungs
Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, 02.02.2024
corner dry lungs, grey knees.
breaking in front of the memory
the chest crying.
moldy leaning death
ripped me juicy, fell alone.
fruit dripping like a fruit ripped
I remember the ground.
I sit until I remember
went unbearable –
poem written and handprinted in the color darkroom for ROUGH TIDE