A Flock of One Hundred Birds Flew East (2018)
Grass, steel cables, heat lamp and one hundred paraffin-wax molds of duck hearts.
Beauty comes in contact with efficacy, creating a form of wisdom that is forgotten too often in the human sphere. The bower nest I built was all of this; it was the wish for a different story, one in which the being of all species would not be threatened by the blind and violent search for profit. Moreover, it wasn’t just the symbol of agency, but the result of active beauty inspired by the more-than-human; its existence the proof of my role as an active agent that can alter the world.
I have been working with that object and idea for many months after my first, instinctive interaction in the Four Corner extractive region. The final form is constituted by a half bower nest I wove together, steel cables I unraveled, a heat lamp, and one hundred paraffin-wax molds I made from duck hearts. The hearts, melting over the time of the show, on one hand create the colorful display that completes the bower bird’s ritual, on the other work as a reminder of all those lives, human and more-than-human, that every day are endangered by the proximity of fracking and extractive processes.
