Birds dream and sing in their sleep. They dream of dancing in the sky, of flying to distant horizons. The Mexican artist Daniel Godínez Nivón, who studied at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, was inspired by this discovery to create the video artwork Dreamwind.
In the attic of the coach house of Wijlre Castle in South Limburg, we see flocks of starlings and snow-white waterfowl performing breathtaking choreographies high in the air and just above the sea. They form arabesques and circles, twist pirouettes. A voice-over recites a poem in which the birds themselves speak, they talk about their dreams, the wind and how their wings ‘weave’ the world.
Scientists from the universities of Maastricht and Lincoln (United Kingdom) put Nivón on the trail of these dreaming, singing birds. The step from science to art is small in the exhibition which, rather complicated, Spark Birds & the Loneliness of Species is called. A ‘spark bird’ is a bird that stimulated someone to take an interest in birds: the ‘spark’ jumped over. ‘Loneliness’ refers to man who became alienated from nature through his actions, and therefore became a lonely species.
Art and science meet in the installation The Professor’s Office by the Dutchman Luuk Wilmering. It is a homage to ethologist Niko Tinbergen. His desk is cluttered with papers and bird books. Tinbergen’s most famous research is that of the red spot on the underside of the herring gull’s beak. On a drawing above the work table we see the beak drawn in countless shapes, large, small, pink, yellow. Also where the red spot is located is variable. The installation is arranged in such a way, with those papers and an open drawer, that it seems that Tinbergen could join us at any moment.
Way of the Cross of Jesus
The starling also returns, this time singing on a nest box on the canvas Black and Part Black Birds in America by Kerry James Marshall. Starlings are not native inhabitants of America, they were introduced by a Shakespeare enthusiast who, at the end of the nineteenth century, had about sixty bird species imported that appear in the oeuvre of the English poet. The starlings are therefore involuntary. Marshall sees a parallel here with the slavery past in the south of the US. Hence the ‘black’ in the title. It is this background that gives the painting deeper meaning and hints at colonial imagery.
Man, that lonely species, catches birds and locks them in cages like Homo Carduelis by the Algerian artist Oussama Tabti. Loudspeakers in 33 empty cages sound the song of the goldfinch or goldfinch, a finch domesticated by man with a religious significance. At the Stations of the Cross of Jesus Christ, the bird would have pulled a thorn (‘thistle’) from his crown of thorns. Blood colored its head red, hence the red spot near its beak. He was also taught to draw water (‘put’) with a small bucket. At the time, the goldfinch was caught on such a large scale that its survival was threatened. All those abandoned cages of this one spark bird symbolize an empty, bird-poor world.
Spark Birds & the Loneliness of Species at Wijlre Castle. Information: Kasteelwijlre.nl until 3/12