Of Quiet Birds

2014

Installation, video, photography, drawings

The various elements of this new project by Nina Kerzelli exist as a singular installation.

The installation takes the overlaying of an object and a moment as its generating point — a child's self-made toy treasured years later by her mother the artist, and a particular experience of Kerzelli as she slowly travels by dolmuş through a snowy landscape in Turkey.

The toy — a painted cardboard aeroplane — suggests for me the 'impulse of delight' driving the young pilot in Yeat's poem towards the 'tumult in the clouds' to fly, experience and perhaps conquer the world. Yeat's young Irishman was heading off for the war and the awakening of an adult world where the trapeze act of flesh and flight has no safety net.

Kerzelli's snowy journal in Turkey has a particular narrative. Dark birds constantly land on the road in the front of and behind her dolmuş seeking out the stored heat of the Turkish winter sun rising from the exposed tarmac. She sees a hunter with his gun taking advantage of this avian bounty.

The child desiring freedom and the birds drawn to the heat of the road both expose themselves precariously to the unknown dangers. There is no resolution to each narrative. Perhaps just a mature sense of déjà vu.

Tom Keogh,

Maquis Projects,

2014