malucate - maculação sobre galinhas: The chick project - Ícaro entre monumentos e fantasmas about chickens: The chick project - Icarus between monuments and ghosts
Icarus - Ícaro
Icarus - watercolor - 224” x 42” - 2024
Creating a parallel between the Greek myth Icarus and the domestication of chickens, I created this big watercolor, where the medium conveys the fluidity and brightness of the computer screen and the scale calls the body to move away to contemplate a cruel practice: a tutorial video on YouTube on how to clip a chicken’s wing. I chose frames of this specific tutorial in Portugal’s Portuguese, which makes a reference to how chickens were brought to Brazilian territory by colonization. I see a parallel with the myth of Icarus, thinking of manufactured man-made (breeded) wings. Those birds that already are designed to not migrate, and then, have their wings clipped assuring they won’t fly too high. Here, there is an example of human’s ambition of bending nature and Icarus’s ambition that leads to his melting downfall.