Sculptor Shirley Tse invited filmmaker and video maker Dana Berman Duff to collaborate on an exhibition at Kling and Bang, a cooperative gallery in Reykjavik founded by Tse's former student Anna Hrund Másdóttir. Working under the name "Relational," the two artists created "The Universe Breathes Us," which premiered at the Reykjavik gallery in 2025 and was shown again that summer at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles.
Tse said her research into tidal turbine power during a residency in Scotland led to the exhibition's central concept. After discovering that tidal power is the only form of renewable energy harnessed from the moon, she connected this idea to a concept from "Yoga Anatomy" about breathing that describes how air enters the body through atmospheric pressure rather than the body actively pulling it in. She decided to invite Berman Duff to collaborate rather than mount a solo show, seeking what she called a "relational force" with another artist.
The exhibition combined Tse's sculptures and photographs with Berman Duff's video projections and an original composition by Berman Duff's husband, composer-musician Alan Duff Berman, performed live by a choir. Works included Tse's photograph "Orkney Moon," showing a soccer ball covered in rice paper in a Scottish field, alongside sculptures and video pieces such as "The Other Side of the Moon Is Not Dark" and "The Breathing Ocean (Portal)."
Berman Duff said the collaboration was not conventional, with each artist creating separate pieces that existed in dialogue with one another. She noted that she had moved from sculpture to film and video to work with time as an element, exploring impermanence rather than creating objects meant to last indefinitely. For the exhibition, Berman Duff calculated the rotation speed of a projected moon by scaling the real moon's diameter to the gallery installation's size and applying the actual lunar rotation period of 29.5 days.
