'Poor Thing' by Kyung Me and Sydney Shen at Hotel Art Pavilion, New York

During the Victorian era, a wave of criminals disguised themselves in women’s mourning garb to commit a range of crimes, from petty theft to murder. In her new work, Kyung Me explores the subversive potential of the decorative, envisioning a character who uses the front of fragility and beauty to detract from a more sinister interiority.

Similarly, Sydney Shen considers protection and permeability with her sculpture of a folding hospital screen with chain maille panels.

A breath that is only transparent space, to the point of considering everything that happens to it as being inside itself, only creates, in its aimless intention, imagined exteriors, no less than does this intention itself. Assuming the guise of many different shapes, each breath distinguished itself by its own way of agitating the void as though familiarizing itself with futility, sometimes seeking as well to accommodate itself with another vaster, emptier breath—here, emptiness inspired no fear whatsoever!

— Pierre Klossowski, The Baphomet

When there is no-body to protect, can you penetrate a breath?