Page 21 - Landscape-Issue148

FEATURE

Avis negro Avis phoenix, rising from the ashes

Exhibit 4 Some of the smaller works on display

intelligence, their appreciation of beauty (domestic poultry), cultivar names are the outcome of events. Nature’s immense
for the sake of beauty, their prehistoric past, added. complexity is evident in the sculpture’s
their elegant forms, their language and multi-faceted shape.
flying patterns, their sense of community, Avis fragilis: fragile
and their delicate forms confirm the fragility The fragile, fine, almost shell-like quality Avis phoenix: rising from ashes
of our ecosystems.” of the sculptures enforces the idea of how This sculpture celebrates a bird’s lightness
As an artist, she is fascinated by the fragile our ecosystems are. yet strength.
avian world’s appreciation of beauty
for beauty’s sake. Birds are aesthetically Avis fractus: broken Avis salvos: survive
inclined, and females specifically select the This refers to the balance that is broken, and Will birds be able to survive this
most handsome male as a mate. Darwin instability becomes evident - much like our anthropocene age? Salvos, Latin for
had difficulty in explaining the peacock’s current worldwide weather patterns and survival, is the name of this cluster of birds.
elaborate feathers, and Bauer birds build epidemics. The bird’s one wing is severed They are tilted at uncomfortable angles to
exquisite colour-coded nests just to impress from its body, making it unbalanced and demonstrate the fragile balance of their
future mates. “glued” incorrectly back onto the body. current existence. In fact, to survive literally
Humanity has made associations with means to ‘live beyond’. It comes from two
living birds since the beginning of time, Avis esca: to eat Latin words: super, which means ‘above, over,
and the stone birds of Easter Island come to or beyond’ and vivere, which means ‘to live’.
mind. Can iconographical sculpture trigger Avis culpat: to blame
collective thoughts? How can my art create A powerful-looking bird gazes at its own
proxy with nature and how can sculpture, reflection. This plays on the fact that humans
as an ancient art form, reconnect us to the always think others are to blame and that
planet? we are not personally responsible for the
ecological loss and destruction in our world.
Bird names The powerful front wing suggests that we
The bird names in Swanepoel’s exhibit are will only destroy ourselves and that the avian
drawn from her botanical background, world will continue to live on without us.
using Latin names to make the message
universal. The genetic name for all her Avis stratera: balance
sculptures is Avis, followed by the species Balance bird refers to the frail balance in
name which is more descriptive. With some the natural world’s ecology, in which a very
works, where the bird has been cultivated small event could cause a major change in Sonja Swanepoel. Photo by J. Cohen n

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