09 OCT – 09 NOV 2025
Artist Stefani Byrd presents ‘The Razor’s Edge’, a solo exhibition curated by Mario Gutiérrez Cru. It is supported by PROYECTOR.
In The Razor’s Edge, Stefani Byrd transforms breath into image and boundary. Each performer slowly exhales against an invisible glass screen which, as it fogs up, obscures and reveals the face in a cycle as fragile as it is insistent. The gesture, projected onto vertical monitors, gives the impression that the glass of the screen itself is the support for that breath, as if the video could condense the ephemeral.
The work echoes the so-called breath test, a method used prior to modern medicine to check whether someone was still alive by placing a mirror under their nose. Here, that historical reference is transformed into a contemporary metaphor: the monitor becomes a ‘razor’s edge’, a liminal space that separates the performer from the viewer, the living presence from its mediated double, the now from its imminent disappearance.
Byrd confronts us with the paradox of the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial. By making breathing perceptible—that essential movement that normally goes unnoticed—the piece questions our relationship with impermanence, with the embodiment of the body, and with the screen as the mediator of all experience. The Razor’s Edge places the viewer on a threshold, forcing us to contemplate the fragility of life and the fleetingness of reality at the very moment it occurs.
OBLIQUO
Calle Valencia 17, Madrid.
Monday to Sunday from 9am to 10pm.
The Razor’s Edge
12:23
2024
“…we are walking the razor’s edge—we are in the present moment.” Charlotte Joko Beck, This Very Moment
The breath is a constant reminder of our physicality and an anchor to our embodied experience. In these video portraits performers exhale slowly against an unseen piece of glass, fogging and obscuring their faces in fleeting moments between breaths. When shown on individual vertical video monitors, it creates the illusion that the performers are breathing against the glass of the screen. This work references the use of the “breath test” in the era before modern medicine where a mirror would be placed under the nose of the dying to test for respiration.
The illusion in the video is uncanny and the screen itself becomes the edge of the razor that separates both past from present, performer from viewer, and the living presence of the viewer from the illusion of life on the screen. An exploration in impermanence, embodiment, and the mediating presence of the screen, the work captures the breath – making it visible just long enough to be confronted by both performer and viewer.
Stefani Byrd
Stefani Byrd is an artist whose work confronts and undermines imbalanced power structures by turning the tables on traditional social relationships. Incorporating video, new media, and interactive technologies, her work addresses a range of issues such as digital feminism, gun violence, and barriers to empathy in a digitally networked society. Their work has been exhibited at places such as the CICA Museum (South Korea), Museum of Contemporary Art Alicante (Spain), SONIC MATTER Festival (Zurich), MOCA San Diego (San Diego), A.I.R. Gallery (Brooklyn), and Aggregate Space Gallery (Oakland). Byrd’s work is held in the permanent collections of MOCA Georgia and the Columbus Museum of American Art.
She was trained in The Abramovic Method of Performance by Marina Abramovic and is also certified in Pauline Oliveros’ method of Deep Listening through Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They hold an MFA in Visual Art from the University of California San Diego and are currently an Assistant Professor in the Film Studies Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.