Timing Birds 2024
A PHOTOGRAPHIC INSTALLATION by Eleftheria Lialios
EXHIBITION :: November 2 through Nov 22, 2024
OPENING Reception :: Saturday, Nov 2 / 6:00 – 10:00 pm
CLOSING & GALLERY TALK :: Friday, Nov 22 / 6:00 – 10:00 pm
This exhibit of work began with hopes of making art from my visual encounters with cross-species friends seen through my kitchen window at the height of the pandemic in March 2020. Continuing my lifelong interest in visual analysis documentation of species-specific behaviors with animals, the bird work developed from stills to prints, to 3-D sculpture (in the form of Bird boxes), to long horizontal panel frames of birds in flight. The birds interact with each other, paying attention to their survival as they move in our atmosphere, crucial to our ecosystem.
In the 1970’s, while a post-baccalaureate student in comparative anthropology at Wayne State University, I worked as a data researcher for New Guinea Papio papio baboons at the Detroit Zoo. When I began my photographic studies in 1976, my pursuits of analysis through scientific observation continued with film, a new tool for understanding the world we live in. Unlike previous works, “Timing Birds,” required long waiting, and watching for the best interactive moments of flight, silence, and stillness. Quick decisions were key to my engaging as quietly as possible, projecting future behaviors that could be simple or complex, framed in milliseconds. A quiet meditation began while looking through my viewfinder, with hierarchy, age, and size playing significant roles in the birds’ power struggles necessary for their survival. The birds took over each other’s eating spots, interacted with each other through arguments, and had mating rituals.
Birds are pivotal to our ecosystem, crucial for our planet’s survival and for our own, giving us clues on climate change through migration patterns. Their behaviors give scientists imperative warning data that help determine preparations for natural disasters. If current trends in climate change continue, two-thirds (1,372) of the 2,059 bird species in North America will be extinct by 2100.
This work is meant to give the viewer bird visibility in our atmosphere, helping us pay attention to them when walking outdoors at all times. These local birds are still my friends, keeping me company all year long. Seeing young finches become excited about a new place to eat is always inspiring to see, bringing me into their world and their need to continue in our world.
Backyard restaurant name: Eleftheria’s Fine Bird Eats.
Reservations not required.
I’ve been shooting film since 1976, and printing color transparencies in the darkroom since 1983. My early darkroom tools were a motor, long tubes, chemicals, paper, and complete darkness. This developed to current digital outputs and paper printed in commercial venues due to the fact that I no longer have access to big printing machines. By housing them in boxes, columns, temples, floors, triangles, and panels, adding edited audio recordings to enhance the sensory experience, an environment is created that I hope stays with the viewer, and reminds the viewer of birds and wildlife presence in their own backyard.
This work was made possible by a grant from The Puffin Foundation
All work is for sale. Contact: elialios@gmail.com
Website: eleftherialialios.com/home.html
———
