BIRDS AND FEATHERS

‘Birds and Feathers’, Single channel digital video with sound, 3:4 Upright Projection, 4min 33sec, 2006

(excerpt from video)

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“Birds and Feathers” is based on an existing ancestral portrait which hunted me from childhood, as I was always told that this distant aunt, born in the early 20th century, had lost her mind during the war and committed suicide. A solid black background is used as a canvas onto which I collaged various cinematic cutouts. This technique is reminiscent of a specific type of 19th and early 20th century Cretan female embroidery and ritual, consisted of silk cocoons placed on a black background in order to frame photographic portraits of soldiers lost in war.