This study explores how installation art transforms viewer experience by intertwining the body, space, and sensory engagement, focusing on Shirazeh Houshiary’s Breath. Unlike traditional art forms, installation art dissolves boundaries between artwork and viewer, positioning the body as an active participant within an immersive environment. Through a qualitative case study of Breath, the paper analyzes how visual, auditory, and architectural elements merge to create a meditative space where the viewer’s physical presence becomes central to the work’s meaning. Drawing on Michael Fried’s concept of “theatricality”—which emphasizes the viewer’s embodied, durational encounter with art—the analysis reveals how Breath challenges art’s autonomy. By immersing audiences in darkness, enveloping them with resonant chants and shifting imagery, the installation shifts focus from the artwork as an object to the viewer’s internal, subjective experience. This interplay of sensory stimuli and confined space heightens awareness of breath as both a physiological and metaphysical act, echoing themes of human existence and transcendence. Houshiary’s work underscores theatricality’s role in contemporary art, where meaning emerges through the viewer’s contextualized, temporal engagement. Breath redefines the gallery as a site of sensory dialogue, where institutional, cultural, and spiritual frameworks intersect. By foregrounding the body’s interaction with space and time, the installation transcends traditional artistic boundaries, inviting personal interpretation and emphasizing art’s relational nature. Ultimately, Breath exemplifies how installation art transforms passive observation into an embodied, transformative encounter, reimagining art’s capacity to mediate between materiality, spirituality, and human perception in contemporary society. Ultimately, the video installation Nafas presents an immersive aesthetic experience and a deliberate artistic intervention within the contemporary cultural and social fabric. By engaging the body in space, challenging the autonomy of the artwork, and emphasizing the role of time and context in artistic experience, this piece arrives at a new understanding of the relationship between art and the viewer.