Birds, fragile creatures that they are, have fascinated mankind with their fluid motion and mysterious lives from time immemorial. Their ability to fly great distances and hide high up and out of sight allows them to lead a secret double life on different continents. The aesthetic qualities of their bodies and their song, their social communication, and their flight evoke within us a sense of curiosity and longing. Artistic depictions of birds have a lengthy history, with the oldest examples dating to the Stone Age. For centuries, birds have featured as a multifaceted symbol in human societies, whether it be in the mythological story of Icarus and his abrupt fall from the sky, Christian depictions of the soul and the Holy Spirit, canaries in cages, or Hitchcock’s famous horror film.

The international exhibition project CHIRPING. Art From a Bird’s-Eye View has been prepared by Pavlína Morganová and Petra Stegmann. The premiere of the exhibition was held under the title of Gezwitscher: Kunst aus der Vogelperspektive and ran from 8 July to 10 September 2023 in Kunshalle Wilhelmshaven in Germany. The current exhibition at the Ústí nad Labem House of Arts constitutes a partially enriched reprise, compiling a diverse collection of famous and lesser-known works bound by a common theme – birds. The exhibition presents works from the 1960s to the present, both those of a conceptual nature as well as drawings, photographs, sculptures, objects, and paintings deliberately juxtaposed by country and period. The show is a product of the longstanding collaboration of the curators and their shared interests, be they in the realm of conceptual and performative art, or in the realm of birdsong. Moreover, it connects two marginalized places with a turbulent history: the North Sea port city of Wilhelmshaven, Germany, named after its founder, the Prussian King Wilhelm I, and Ústí nad Labem, the industrial and university centre of the North Bohemia region. As in the case of Wilhelsmhaven, the urban character of Ústí nad Labem was irrevocably reshaped by Allied bombing during the final chapters of World War II. The two cities share a number of other attributes, too, but the most interesting one for us is the historical presence of outstanding institutions specializing in the study and conservation of birds. In 1908, Ústí entrepreneur Heinrich Lumpe established a bird sanctuary, a so-called Natur- und Vogelschutzpark, on a wild and rocky slope within the premises of a former brickyard. Today, the site is home to the Ústí nad Labem zoo. On this extensive parcel of land, he gradually built several buildings and different secluded areas ideal for songbird nesting. In the 1920s, the sanctuary, known as the Lumpepark, was opened to the public for most of the year, with the exception of the winter feeding and spring nesting periods, during which birds are at their most vulnerable. From the outset, the aim of this natural amusement park was to protect birds and raise public awareness. Likewise, Wilhelmshaven is home to the Institut für Vogelforschung, which upon its founding in 1910 was known as Vogelwarte. It is the second-oldest institution in the world specializing in bird tracking and ornithology research. Currently, the institute primarily focuses on bird migration research.

The exhibition CHIRPING. Art From a Bird’s-Eye View compiles a number of remarkable works of art. It reveals, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, just how ubiquitous the themes of flying, transformation into a bird, birdsong, and the life of birds are in the creations of a wide variety of artists. The exhibition opens with a facsimile of the famous Fly Piece (1963) by Yoko Ono, a lapidary invitation to fly, and Tentativo di volo [Attempt to Fly] (1970) by Gino de Dominicis, a performance in which the now nearly forgotten Italian artist repeatedly jumps from a tall stone, waving his arms enthusiastically in an attempt to learn to fly. Also unique is the reinstallation of Marina Abramović’s sound environment, which she originally exhibited in 1972 in front of the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade. Other key female artists of the twentieth century are also represented in the project, such as VALIE EXPORT and Ana Mendieta, both of whom appear via footage of disturbing performances. Among the older performative works, the exhibition presents documentation of actions by Czech body artists Karel Miler and Jan Mlčoch as well as the legendary happening known as Bird Feast (1969), which was prepared by Zorka Ságlová, Jan Ságl, Ivan Jirous, and Věra Jirousová in collaboration with the rock band The Primitives Group. The well-known Czech photographer Jan Ságl is also presented independently through a conceptual project entitled Vlaštovky [Swallows] Swallows (1975), in which photographs of swallows perched on wires served as a partiture. Here, too, we can place the German photographer Jochen Lempert, originally a biologist whose path to artistic creation began with nature photography. Ságl and Lemper are seasoned explorers of the medium of photography from both a technical and an aesthetic point of view, and the theme of birds appears regularly in their work. As it does in the work of North Bohemian painter Jiří Kubový, who since the 1980s has been deconstructing the medium of the hanging image through a variety of conceptual techniques. A completely different aesthetic is found in the conceptual drawings of pigeons by Slovak artist Peter Bartoš. These are complemented by sketched depictions of birdsong by the late Czech artist Olga Karlíková and drawings of winged predators, such as owls and eagles, created with closed eyes by the renowned contemporary Israeli artist Yehudit Sasportas. Drawings by the American artist Mark Dion, on the other hand, are a nod to large-scale museum installations in which he thematizes the appropriation of nature by man.

The exhibition’s selection of contemporary artists includes the German sculptor Matthias Garff, who is well known for his sculptures of birds crafted from a variety of materials, including waste. These faithful yet often hugely exaggerated imitations give rise to both laughter and quiet reflection. A similar ambiguity, a combination of the tragicomic and abstraction, is characteristic of an object featuring a taxidermied parrot by the famous German artist Via Lewandowsky. Swiss artist Julia Steiner had a taxidermied bird cast in bronze, an impressive sculpture that viewers can set in motion, having it take flight once more. A video performance entitled Playing to the Birds (2019) presents contemporary German artist Annika Kahrs, who had Franz Liszt’s composition Légende No. 1, which was inspired by the sermon of St Francis of Assisi, played in an impressive castle setting in the presence of many caged birds. The youngest generation is represented by the artistic duo Margarita Ivy and Bystrík Klčo, who met while studying at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Their unnerving installation The Birds in My Homeplace Imitate the Whistles of the Rockets (2023) is a direct response to the ongoing war crisis in Ukraine.
Polish artist Diana Lelonek, who in her work has repeatedly explored the impact of human activity on the avian and animal kingdoms, lends a critical voice to the exhibition, presenting extinct bird species in a sound installation called Endling (2019). This theme is also touched upon in the project Séance Vocibus Avium (2008) by Wolfgang Müller, a German visual artist, musician, and author of numerous books. Like many of the other exhibitors, he too is an amateur ornithologist. The internationally renowned Czech artist Eva Koťátková, who in her drawings, collages, objects, and installations has continuously examined the topic of birds, also appears in the exhibition, her audio project Becoming a Bird (2018) is particularly worthy of mention.

As this brief overview clearly suggests, CHIRPING. Art From a Bird’s-Eye View presents a variety of artistic perspectives and authorial statements. In many of the works, it touches on current social and ecological crises in an unsettling manner, harnessing a wide range of contemporary media to break down boundaries between animal and human communities while casting a critical eye on mutual interactions, exploring aesthetic differences with admiration, and contemplating the timeless existential values of our world.