INDAH ARSYAD. The Ultimate Breath

What does it mean to breathe — in a world where oxygen, the environment, and the future are no longer guaranteed?
With The Ultimate Breath, Indonesian artist Indah Arsyad presents a multimedia installation at the Weltmuseum Wien that is as poetic as it is urgent, weaving together personal experience, scientific data, and centuries-old mythologies.

The work begins with a deeply physical experience: Arsyad’s own COVID-19 illness in 2020, during which breathing suddenly became a question of survival. From this experience, she developed an artistic investigation that links the fragility of breath with the state of our planet. In collaboration with the Indonesian National Research Agency and marine scientists, she examined environmental and climate data — particularly the increasing pollution of the oceans — and translated it into a layered, sensory installation.

Arsyad draws on multiple systems of knowledge. As a trained landscape and environmental architect, she brings precise expertise in data, sensors, and real-time measurements. At the same time, she draws on Javanese mythology — particularly Wayang kulit, the traditional shadow theatre, and the symbol of the Gunungan, representing cosmic order, transition, and transformation. For Arsyad, these mythologies are not historical relics but living frameworks of thought that continue to shape daily life, rituals, and cosmology in Javanese society.

In The Ultimate Breath, these layers meet on equal footing: mythological symbols stand alongside microscopic imagery, sound, light, and real-time data. Past, present, and future intertwine into an open space for reflection, where technology does not act as a counterpoint to spirituality but as a mirror and conversational partner.

The film follows Indah Arsyad and Claudia Banz, director of the Weltmuseum Wien, through this installation while also reflecting a fundamental museological approach. For Banz, the exhibition exemplifies the WMW Contemporary program: an argument for understanding ethnological collections not as closed archives, but as living knowledge spaces. Especially in the face of global questions like climate, memory, and identity, it demonstrates the contemporary relevance of a museum that allows and fosters dialogue between diverse perspectives.

The Ultimate Breath invites not only to look, but to experience. Visitors enter an atmospheric space that sharpens perception and raises questions: How do we breathe? How do we live? And what knowledge do we need to rethink our relationship with the Earth?

https://www.weltmuseumwien.at

Interviewee: Indah Arsyad, Claudia Banz
Artworks by: Indah Arsyad

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German, Indonesian
Subtitles: English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Helmut Feier, Wolfgang Haas, Melvin Urregg, Michael Rottmann,
Production country: Austria, Vienna