White Bird Parabola
Feathers, thread, a chair, and light
2012
From the experience of moving to a foreign country, I often feel I am a traveler and a sojourner. A sojourner seems to move from one place to another without a place to settle down. It resembles a white bird flying in the air. When you look at a white bird flying, it stands out in its surrounding landscape of different colors. In the Japanese language, we often express this kind of scene metaphorically as “The white bird looks like it never gets dyed by any colors of the surrounding landscape”. This expression of “never getting dyed by other colors” is also used idiomatically to express people’s condition of not getting adjusted to or not being influenced by the environment. A sojourner is like an isolated white bird flying, without getting dyed by other colors.
With this particular installation art piece, I expressed this feeling of a sojourner like a white bird. The component with multiple “white feather balls” creating a parabola-like shadows on the wall represents the locus of the journey of a white bird. Each ball is a separate point, but they are creating one line together. Because this component also looks like an “infinity” symbol, this journey can be read as an endless ongoing matter.
I placed one chair underneath the parabola structure to create an introspective image as a whole. Also, the chair represents a place to rest. By scattering feathers and feather balls on the chair and the floor, I expressed my frequenting this place to rest.
The sojourner travels just like an isolated white bird flying endlessly. Is the white bird lonely? To me, it looks like flying with strength and dignity. The white bird continues to fly in the air with dynamic movement and constant rhythm.