The team at Void Art Centre are excited to present our upcoming exhibition, The Breathing Wall, a solo presentation by artist Daniel Godínez Nivón which marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK and North of Ireland. The exhibition opens on Saturday 26 September 2026, from 6-8pm and runs until Saturday 12 December 2026.
Daniel’s practice explores dreaming as a shared space for encountering other forms of life and sparking collective imagination. Bringing together dreams, ecological relationships and different forms of knowledge, his work explores the possibility of an ecosystem of dreams: a territory shared by humans, plants, stones and other beings. The Breathing Wall is an invitation to dream with a place and the many forms of life and memory it holds.
Developed through nearly a year and a half of artistic research, The Breathing Wall explores the material and ecological life of Derry’s historic walls. Encounters with the stone and the plants growing in its crevices, together with conversations with people dedicated to the wall’s care, including Friends of the Derry Walls and a local stonemason, shaped the research and offered ways of approaching the wall across different scales of time.
The schist used to build the wall carries the memory of an ancient seabed. Formed through immense pressure, heat and time, its mineral structure holds traces of transformations extending deep into the Earth’s history. Across its surface, Parietaria judaica, Cymbalaria muralis, Prunella vulgaris, Asplenium ruta-muraria and Asplenium ceterach grow among its joints and fissures. These plants have long histories of medicinal use associated with healing wounds, soothing inflammation and supporting blood circulation. Growing from the cracks of the wall, they form a delicate community with stone, water, microorganisms, insects and human activity.
Daniel approaches the wall through dreaming and the manual reconstruction of its material world. Stones and plants are encountered through touch, drawing, modelling and moving image. Working with these elements by hand becomes a way of studying their forms, textures and histories, and an invitation to know the wall through the body and the imagination.
Through moving image, sound, drawing, sculpture and vibration, The Breathing Wall brings geological time, vegetal life and dreaming into the same space. The exhibition approaches dreams as an ecological territory where different forms of existence can meet, and invites us to listen to the memories held within plants, stones and landscapes. Dreaming becomes a way of entering into relation with the living world and recognising ourselves within the ecosystems we share.
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The Breathing Wall is supported by Arts Council Northern Ireland, Foundation Foundation and Mondriaan Fund.
