GESTE Paris presents

Le Souffle du Nomade

Nomad’s Breath

10 November - 6 December 2025

FARID RASULOV, ALMAGUL MENLIBAYEVA, MAAYA WAKASUGI, MAMALI SHAFAHI, ROBERTA MARROQUIN, JON MCCORMACK, HEATHER MATTERA, LYNDA DRAPER, FANSACK, STEVE MCCURRY, JULIETTE SOMNOLET, ROBIN MEIER

curated by Lexing Zhang and Amber Terranova

In an age shaped as much by excess as by absence, Nomad’s Breath gathers twelve artists whose works move like a traveler’s exhale: light, resonant, connective. This exhibition frames nomadism not as rootlessness, but as a way of breathing with the world: exchanging presence, story and shelter rather than possessions. Generosity is unmeasured; it lives in the smallest gestures. A glance across distance, a note of song, the hush of shared silence. The nomad breathes in rhythm with the landscapes they cross, offering whatever they hold — salt, song, solace — to those they meet.

Nomad’s Breath positions nomadism as a living knowledge system rather than metaphor. For centuries, nomadic peoples have developed lifeways rooted in reciprocity and adaptability, cultivating ecological wisdom and exchange practices that ensure their survival across shifting terrains. These traditions remind us that to travel lightly is not to live with less, but to live with more intention — where acts of giving and receiving strengthen the bonds of community.

Rituals pulse throughout the exhibition as counterweights to modern discontinuity. Works span the raw immediacy of photojournalism to the atmospheric depth of conceptual art, revealing both traces of resilience and rituals that sustain life on the move. They give shape to thresholds—arrivals and departures, partings and reunions — and knit community across time. As philosopher Byung-Chul Han observed, “Rituals give form to the essential transitions of life.” They are a form of closure. Without them, we drift untethered. Within Nomad’s Breath, ritual is reframed as a practice of care: a way of weaving meaning from breath, pattern and memory.

The pandemic years sharpened this awareness. With contact curtailed, many realized how little one needs to live — yet how vital connection is. In parallel, interest in “digital nomadism” surged. Nomad’s Breath links such currents to lifeways honed over millennia — worldviews grounded in reciprocity, ecological intelligence and hospitality.

Presented in two chapters — Dematerialization and Sacred Nature — the exhibition moves from the lightness of portable culture and acts of generosity to the deep cosmological ties between people and place. Together, these works invite us to imagine futures sustained less by accumulation and control than by reciprocity, welcome and partnership.

In an era dominated by artificial intelligence and digital pervasiveness, Nomad’s Breath invites visitors to step into an analogue and handcrafted world of visual and emotional intensity. 

RSVP strictly necessary

GESTE Paris is an annual underground exhibition of experimental photography and image-based artworks organised by artist/ curator/ cultural ambassador Shiva Lynn Burgos. GESTE brings together vintage and contemporary works by both established and emerging artists. Like a secret speakeasy GESTE is presented in the convivial setting of a classic Parisian apartment that provides a space for reflection and dialogue. GESTE is the nexus of a private collection, artwork from leading galleries, and a selection by invited curators.