Hope is the thing with feathers

YEAR: 2023
MEDIUM: Video installation, painted cactus, 07:01 mins
FUNDING: AADK, Media Art Friesland

Visual research into how colombicultura pigeons are painted.

During our residency at AADK, we discovered that our immediate neighbours kept colombicultura pigeons in a coup next to the residency building. José, his 11-year-old goddaughter and their three dogs would pass through our terrace to spend their evenings and weekends with the pigeons. We approached them and asked if we could visit the coup, which began the start of a new friendship.

One Sunday afternoon, José was painting one of his new pigeons and invited us to witness it. We documented it through film and photography as research for our film, La Curiosidad de Blanca y Negra. For the residency public Open Studios, we presented an edited cut of this footage, projected on a hanging screen in our studio. Around the room were small hanging models of the colombicultura pigeons made from dried cactus collected from the surrounding landscape. During several evenings, Samantha joined me in the studio to paint the cactus birds. More than simply being documentation, this film came to represent the friendship we had developed with José and Samantha who also joined us at the Open Studios.

Hope is the thing with feathers takes its name from the eponymous poem by Emily Dickinson, the first verse of which is read in Spanish by Samantha in the film.