“The Golden Bird” is a site-specific installation realized for North Willow’s gallery space in Montclair, New Jersey.

The map is in a dialogue with the symbolic. It alludes to/ or represents something else. It is an access key towards a particular space, while it resembles something very different from its aesthetical form. It is not necessarily relevant whether the reality represented by a map exists or not, since it can perfectly symbolize either a fictive or real space. 

 

In this work, I questioned what can be defined as real, wondering if it is possible to state that something exists and that something else does not. If we believe in the way that something can model our interaction with the environment we can, in concrete terms, create a reality to be inhabited.

In the children’s games of pretend, a place overlaps another place, and a physical space gains the capability to become, simultaneously, a different place. In this translation process lies a great space for potential: a rupture of the narrative can create access to another system. The transforming body becomes the territory that hosts two maps: the floor plan of North Willow Gallery and the map of Lascaux Cave. The dimensions are based on the measurements of the windows of the attic, referring to Pavel Florensky’s conception of the icon as a transitional point between two worlds.