The bird sings regardless of an audience; the lily blossoms indifferent to its soil.
Inspired by Kierkegaard’s The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air, this project explores the quiet integrity of being versus the loud exhaustion of seeming. While we praise the strong individual, we simultaneously craft meticulous personas and seek external validation – slaves to the public image. The dead bird and the withered lily have quietly fulfilled their purpose, the effortless existence of nature versus the curated performances of human identity.
In these works the human body meets the quiet finality of nature. The project captures the tension between our frantic search for recognition, our praise of what’s bigger , better, more, and the silent, unheeding existence of nature. While we spend our lives constructing and performing unique personas for an audience, the dead bird and the withered lily represent a radical departure from performance. They have lived out their purpose, now they simply are, beautiful even in death. By placing the living body alongside these symbols of passing I question what it means to be free as the bird and lovely as the lily. I wish for a lesson in radical presence, questioning what happens when we stop performing and start being.
Birds and Bodies
Collages with photographs on acrylic paintings
Photographs with digitally projected photographs
