Normal Activities

To make trouble is a form of magical act. This work started for me as a reflection of my uprooting from Portugal to the Netherlands and the feelings of uneasyness and displacement I felt moving to a place that really doesn't belong to me. And the same could be
said about the bird, that through waves of migration come and go from and to the Netherlands, more specifically the quaint canals and streets of Amsterdam. Visitors from far away places who claim their own place in the city, something I'm trying to do as well. So this project has evolved from this pervasive feeling to a reflection on the lower of disruption that pervades the bird's existence in the city. My interest in the coots comes from their abundance in the waterways of Amsterdam. Their ubiquitous presence in these spaces challenges the perceived human dominance, as they take over whatever space is left and make them their own. Through my research into them, I discovered that coots have been compared to humans since at least the medieval era. They were often described by medieval sources as the species of birds with the most similarities to humans. For this reason, they became a metaphor for a good and respectful Christian person.

Following this research, I realized that it would be funny to see these birds invading a furniture store and walking around the beige couches that populate it. That's why I began doing the drawings, so that I could make the coots do human things. The human and the bird figure switch positions, make the birds temporary inhabit the spaces we use everyday. This allowed me to reflect on the actions and tasks we do everyday and that usually seem very normal to us. Our routines are based on the artificiality of the this capitalist system, a system that demands more and more form us and from nature. The project uses the bird to show how detached we have become.