Murmuration (Landscape) by Cai Guo-Qiang
Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang created a swarm of 10,000 porcelain birds, titled Murmuration (Landscape) as part of a large-scale exhibit at Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, combining Cai’s contemporary work with the display of a selection of China’s famed ancient terracotta warriors.
Cai, who is best known for his enormous artworks that utilize fireworks, assembled the vast quantity of birds and smudged them black with gunpowder. The installation fills an entire gallery and the birds are suspended to create a 3D impression of a calligraphic drawing of Mount Li, where the tomb of the ancient warriors was located.
I love this piece and I love it's reply to the artifacts it relates to. It feels really poignant to me as a piece on relation to what I'm considering around the power and intelligence of collective. Of the power that can be found in unification. I think it's really intelligent that the porcelain birds are coated with gun powder. It brings the combustible danger that is complicit with toxic or maligned unification into the conversation and how that can explode that natural order of things.
