Dhara Rivera, Aves y Agüeros (Birds and Omens)

Dhara Rivera is one of the most relevant multimedia artists of Puerto Rico and one of the most celebrated of her generation. Her artistic production is characterized by a deep respect for the materials, a very high level of execution and a surprising capacity to provoke emotional responses in the spectator that lead him/her to assume an active attitude in the face of an evidenced reality. For years, a large part of her artistic practice has had as a theoretical framework her own research on themes that refer to the impact of humans on nature, the destruction of ecosystems, the environmental crisis and climate change. Faced with the complexity of the issues, the artist combines visual strategies that, in addition to serving to build the poetics of her work, allow her, beyond the data expressed in the scientific reports, to establish a silent conversation with the viewer, to whom she confers the power to interpret the work. After a first impression, essentially emotional, the spectator begins a process of reflection that leads him/her to identify the formal elements and to find the apparent symbolic allusions of the work. Subsequently, the viewer will see how a self-fulfilling prophecy takes him/ her out of the individual and connects him/her to a sense of global identity that commits him/ her to act. In today's interconnected world, seeking action to address climate change, the environmental crisis and biodiversity loss requires accepting that all of these issues are in fact problems of culture, such as poverty or social inequality, and therefore concern the entire global community. The trajectory that Dhara Rivera has followed makes her an artist highly committed to her causes, as the agent of change that she knows she is, and to her work as an instrument for social transformation.

Río y respiro (2012), was a performative action and ephemeral installation that Dhara Rivera made in the Río Grande de Loíza, Puerto Rico. The work is a tribute to the largest river on the island. This work highlighted the importance of the river's ecosystem and its influence on the local culture. A group of students from the Fine Arts and Design School in Puerto Rico some residents of the town of Loíza and members of the Canóvanas Fishermen's Association participated in the project. For six hours, 150 glass spheres were dragged by a boat along a six-mile stretch of river near the estuary. The string of spheres formed a 145-foot-long chain. Each sphere carried a piece of writing with stories of the community inside. The chain symbolized at the same time imaginary stitches for the wounds caused to the river by pollution.

Another performative action and ephemeral installation by Dhara Rivera was Homenaje al Pterocarpus (2011), where the focus was on the Pterocarpus, a tree endemic to the Caribbean that is vital to the wetland ecosystem and whose red sap is attributed with medicinal properties in the region. On our island there are still small forests of this tree, threatened with extinction by real estate speculation on the coast and the climate crisis. The project was carried out in an artificial lake near wetlands, managed by FITS Foundation in Dorado, Puerto Rico. In this action, 185 glass spheres were deposited on the surface of the water, each with a replica of the trunk of the Pterocarpus tree.

The spheres, strung together on the water, formed a kind of map suggesting the ecological and cultural connection of the Caribbean.

Rivera’s concern for the problem of aquatic ecosystems led the artist to investigate the effects of fragmentation, channeling and diversion of the natural channels of rivers and streams in the towns and cities of the country. From this research arises the performative action and ephemeral installation Cosiendo agua (2010). The place chosen for the project was a channeled spot of the Quebrada Margarita, in the metropolitan area of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the performative action, the artist, followed by the members of Araña de agua, traveled a two-kilometer route along Roosevelt Avenue in Hato Rey, claiming the intriguing reaction ofmotorists as she passed by.  Each of the participants wore a white jumpsuit reminiscent of those used in laboratories to protect against chemical or biological substances. Tied at the waist with a red rope, each carried a glass sphere filled with water. When they reached the ravine, other red ropes were deployed where the spheres they had previously carried were placed. The ropes crossed the body of water from shore to shore, stretched taut on gigantic nails. Most of the rivers and creeks of the cities have been used as sewers, so the ropes in the spot seemed to be stitches of a sanitation operation of the water segment. During the two days that the installation remained in place, passersby crossing the bridge over the creek registered mixed impressions. Sewing water-iteration (2019), an installation with similar characteristics was installed over the pond of the Botanical Sculpture Garden of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico as part of the exhibition El espacio común: Producción artística en y acerca de la ciudad (2019), curated by Vanessa Hernández Gracia.

A la miri, meri, mir...A tribute to the children who live at the shore of the Lerma-Santiago river (2009-2010) was a performative action directed by Dhara Rivera that took place outside of Puerto Rico, specifically on this river, in the community El Salto de Juanacatlán, in Jalisco, Mexico. The river is one of the largest and most polluted in the country. To date, more than 200 industries dump their toxic waste into the river, causing residents of the neighboring towns to suffer from high levels of serious illness. In 2008, eight-year-old Miguel Ángel López was playing on the banks of the river and fell into the contaminated water, which caused his death from arsenic poisoning. In the action, the artist submerges a white baptismal gown in the dense and contaminated foam of the river, as a tribute to all the children who, like Miguel Ángel, have lost their lives in the river. The group Un salto de vida, a collective created in 2006, continues to lobby for the sanitation of the river's water, its preservation against contamination by industries, including the agro-livestock industry, and access to the use of water as a community heritage.

Aves y Agüeros Birds and Omens) is the result of a research Dhara Rivera conducted for approximately eight years. Since then, the artist has dedicated herself to collect objects she found in the wetlands near her home in Loiza: abandoned nests, some of them with dead chicks inside, and endemic birds also dead and desiccated by the effects of high temperatures. This collection of different pieces increased with the discovery of other birds and parts of their anatomy, such as wings and internal organs, on the roadside. As a support for the exhibition, the artist used a personal reflection on two texts: the book by the American biologist Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, published in 1962, and the essay by the Cuban writer living in Puerto Rico Eduardo Lalo, "Narrating the Unnamable,” included in the book Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm, published in 2019. Both readings narrate the annihilation of birds: in the first about the indiscriminate use of pesticides such as DDT and, in the second, about the disappearance of more than half of an endangered species, such as Puerto Rican parrots, which, as a result of the winds of Hurricane María faced the destruction of their habitat and food source. Defining the artist as a collector of possibilities distinguishes her from the collector interested in a scientific ordering of objects. For Rivera, it is the strategies used in the realization of the work that determine the use of the object and its value.

The artist's interest in birds makes her research on the impact of human beings on nature, the destruction of ecosystems, the environmental crisis and climate change, transcend the existing border between the local and the global. Since birds can move freely, are of varied sizes, constitute very large populations, belong to many species distributed around the globe and can be seen with the naked eye or with binoculars, they are the best biological indicator of what is happening in a given region, as well as throughout the planet. Recent observations include the change in the migratory patterns of birds due to the increase in global temperature, the unprecedented mortality of insectivorous birds due to the destruction of their main source

of food and their habitats, almost always due to the clearing of land for agricultural and livestock industries or the burning of vegetation to develop population centers.

To these observations must be added the decrease of specimens due to accidents caused by collisions with the windows of buildings in the cities, by power lines in poor condition, by wind installations placed in migratory areas or by pollution from plastics or toxic waste. The hunting of exotic specimens for the black market or the consumption of birds considered gastronomic delicacies are also a cause of mortality. To this long list must be added the death or loss of habitats due to natural phenomena such as increasingly intense hurricanes as a result of climate change.

Birds have always occupied a prominent place in the collective imagination. Hundreds of references can be found in the mythology of the peoples. In the Taino legend of Alida and Taroo, for example, when their love is impossible, the gods turn them into a flower and a hummingbird, respectively, out of pity. In Aztec mythology, the hummingbird or Huitzilin is the incarnation of a brave warrior and, in Mayan mythology, the hummingbird or T'zunun is the most skilled messenger of the gods. In Egyptian mythology many of the gods are Theriomorphs; that is, with human body and animal head, so some are represented with bird heads. Thoth, god of wisdom, of hieroglyphic writing and scribe of the deeds of men, is represented with the head of a hermit ibis. Other Egyptian gods are represented as humans, but carrying wings like those of birds. Thus Isis, mother goddess of the Egyptian pantheon, and Ma'at, goddess of truth and justice, are represented. The representation of beings with human bodies carrying wings is also present in the so-called religions of the book; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, although the origin goes back to the cults of ancient Mesopotamia. In the great majority of traditions, part of the mission of these winged beings is to serve as messengers and intermediaries between divinity and humanity. Although only the gods have the capacity to transform, adopt the form or possess the characteristics of birds, humans can also imitate them. Greek mythology tells how Daedalus, while trying to escape from the labyrinth of Crete with his son Icarus, made wings with thread, wax and bird feathers. The contraption proved successful, so they flapped their wings and flew away. Icarus, amazed by the invention, began to ascend without taking into account that the heat of the sun softened the wax. He then fell into the sea where he drowned.

Birds have also been a motive for artistic creation. In music, the ballet The Firebird, by Igor Stravinskiy, recreates a legend of Slavic folklore. The symphonic poem Uirapuru, by Heitor Villa-Lobos, is inspired by the melodious song of the bird of the same name that inhabits the Amazon jungle. In children's literature, it is impossible to forget the role of birds in Aesop's Fables, in which, together with other humanized animals, they impart teachings by means of morals. In the same way, tales such as The Wren, by the Brothers Grimm, or The Ugly Duckling, by Hans Christian Andersen, come to mind. Not to be left out the cartoon birds, such as the grumpy Donald Duck from Disney Studios, or the chatty Daffy Duck and the mischievous Tweety Bird from Warner Studios. To this same genre of birds belongs the clumsy Big Bird, one of the protagonists of the children's television program Sesame Street. Cinema has also incorporated birds into the plot of its films, as they appear in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

It is in the history of the visual arts, however, where the representation of birds has not ceased to be an important and widely used motif: from the earliest representations in cave art to the flocks of hundreds of different species flying through the air from the earthly paradise painted on the left panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jeronimus van Aken, "Bosch", to the famous “Dove of Peace” by Pablo Picasso, or even the 10,000 porcelain birds suspended in the air above the heads of the spectators of the monumental installation, “The Transient Landscape” by Cai Guo-Qian.

Moved by wonder, curiosity and fascination, Dhara Rivera began to collect images of all kinds of birds, real or imaginary, in different environments or situations, from different sources. From this compilation was born the artist's book A vuelo de pájaro. The book has nothing to do with those in which illustrations of birds are collected from expert ornithologists. As mentioned, the artist does not pursue a scientific order, so at first glance one might think that the images have been placed without order or concert. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dhara Rivera's reflective capacity and her interest in research make the book have a meditated and well studied structure. For this reason, the images can produce the most disparate emotions in the viewer: from the displeasure that can be caused by the image of Oswald Cobbepot, the quirky penguin with a top hat who is Batman's enemy, to the tenderness provoked by the extinct dodo illustrated by John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, - from the awe that can be generated by the birds in flight in Eadweard Muybridge's chronophotographs to the sadness aroused by the tragic gastronomic fate of the orchard bunting, - from the curiosity aroused by the Chokwe tribe of Central Africa with their painted bodies and faces covered with masks of birds with articulated beaks to the attitude of rejection provoked by the images of birds subjected to taxidermy. This artist's book, made with different papers and designed with shapes that emerge, with pages that fold and unfold, with tabs and strips that pull, with cropped, manipulated and colored images, though absolutely beautiful, it is only a preview of what will be a scathing tale.

Many of Dhara Rivera's pieces are an invitation to reflect, to put the mind in blank, to contemplate and rethink. This is the case of Corralera común, a work composed of two separate, exempt groups that complement each other. The first group consists of four figures, a hen with three chicks, which the viewer must observe by looking down. The second group consists of the figures of two fighting cocks that must be observed from the front. The weight and rigidity projected by the figures in both groups function as triggers to evoke disturbing emotional sensations in the viewer. The selection of materials plays a determining role in this aspect. The hen and the three chicks in the first group are the typical, crude, mass-produced cement figures that serve as decoration in home gardens. Also derived from the domestic sphere is the crochet fabric that Dhara Rivera learned from her mother and with which she covers the figures in black. The hen does not cluck and none of the three chicks chirps. The fabric that covers and imprisons them totally depersonalizes them. On the floor below the figures is a rug designed by the artist, showing a photograph in contrasting shades of turkeys in a market. A piece of chicken wire, painted black, completes the image of obvious apocalyptic connotation. The second group is composed of two metal figures imitating fighting cocks, also covered with black crocheted fabric. The tangled black-painted chicken wire mesh that envelops them barely allows a glimpse of the figures of the roosters they are supposed to be, fluttering, jumping, feathers ruffled and pecking at their rival. As in the figures of the first group, the roosters are also completely depersonalized. In both groups, the shadows cast by the effects of light are an important element that adds drama and causes uneasiness, with which she manages to objectify the subjectivity of the pieces, so that they do not respond to a specific format, but, as depersonalized objects, transcend the limits of their physicality and can fix in the mind of the viewer what is only the result of his/her emotionality.

Feathers are a unique characteristic of birds. They allow them to maintain body temperature, send visual and sound signals to mate or protect themselves, incubate, identify themselves, swim, dive, float and fly. The striking beauty of feathers has led man to use them as ornaments since prehistoric times. From the plumes of Roman helmets to the fashion of using the feathers of the most exotic birds to display on women's hats, the history of feather use has been one of cruelty and predation. The demand for feathers has been of such a nature that the trade, legal or not, has managed to extinguish entire species of birds, since, in order to increase their

value, they are killed during their mating season, when their plumage is at its most brilliant and showy, thus interrupting their reproductive cycle and the propagation of their species.

The history of human cruelty and predation towards other animals is eloquently expressed in Revision. In this work, Rivera presents the coats of three birds purchased in the market that, in all likelihood, were destined for the taxidermy work so fashionable in recent years. The coats purchased by the artist correspond to a guinea, a pheasant and a capercaillie, birds that belong to the group commonly known as gallinaceous. The artist presents the birds' coats, each of them stretched in oval frames. The beauty of the feathers immediately captures the viewer's attention, who at first is only drawn to the front of the piece. But the artist does not articulate a single visual reference. Three mirrors, also oval and placed at a certain distance, reflect the back of the pieces, the dry and delicate epidermis of the skinned birds. When the viewer's attention shifts to another visual reference point and notices the images reflected in each of the mirrors, he or she is confronted with horror at a truly bloody act of human barbarism. These birds, mainly terrestrial and very bad fliers, have been distributed around the world for hunting purposes, so it will never be known if the birds were originally killed for the consumption of their meat, for the love of hunting or simply for the beauty of their fur. In the history of art we have similar references to this scene, such as the famous The Skinned Ox by Rembrandt van Rijh, where in the foreground the viewer is confronted with the corpse of a skinned ox hanging from a bar. The difference lies in the fact that the animal is known to be in the interior space of a butcher's shop and that the animal has been slaughtered for the consumption of its meat. In Rivera's work, the spectator will always be left with the doubt as to the reason for the slaughter. In any case, the work forces us to review the relationship between human beings and other species. After becoming the dominant species and the main predator, the human being has proclaimed himself the sole and subjective beneficiary of nature. In the process, he seems to have forgotten the importance of maintaining the natural balance, destroying the biosphere and putting his own existence at stake. The images reflected in the mirrors not only show the epidermis of the birds, but also reflect the actions of the most dangerous species on the planet: the human being. It is well known that human impact on nature is the main cause of the loss of biodiversity on the planet and is directly responsible for the mass extinction of birds. Birds, which have the ability to fly long distances during migrations, to escape natural phenomena, to evade predators and to thrive in almost all ecosystems, cannot escape the threat of extinction caused by humans. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly common to find dead birds on roadsides or around homes and buildings. This was the artist's experience when, in the wetlands near her home in Loíza, she found a white Heron and a common Yaboa dead and desiccated by the high temperatures. Using a strategy common in contemporary art, she decided to preserve the specimens and transform them into art: Los sueños de María Sybilla I, with the large and slender white heron, and Los sueños de María Sybilla II  with the smaller and more shy blue-gray common Yaboa. Both pieces pay homage with their title to Maria Sybilla Merian, the great Swiss entomologist who at the end of the 17th century illustrated the complete life cycle and actual habitat of 186 insect species of Suriname. Today, Maria Sybilla Merian is considered one of the most important naturalist artists in history. After preserving the specimens, Rivera proceeded to embalm them, recalling the rituals of animal mummies, perhaps the most numerous objects from ancient Egypt. To this end, the artist covered the two specimens with crochet fabric in a free technique, which allowed her to create various forms and then assemble them together as a canvas. This technique also allows her to incorporate a diversity of textures. In both pieces, the overlapping ivory-colored fabric creates openings insinuating wounds that allow us to see the underlying maroon-colored fabric that insinuates blood. Underneath the embalmed body of the white heron, which extends over the surface of an oval sheet of molten glass made by the artist herself, a maroon fabric that simulates a pool of blood and repeatedly enhances the sense of horror. On her embalmed body there are egg-shaped protuberances that promise a future rebirth similar to that of the phoenix. The embalmed body

of the common Yaboa rests on a glass surface where the artist has etched the bird's silhouette with acid. The silhouette of the bird recreates a kind of luminous shadow where the light is not transparent as an esoteric symbol of what has ceased to be.

From the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it became fashionable for wealthy families to collect the most unusual objects of the natural world from the newly discovered geographies. With the purpose of exhibiting and showing them off, an important place was reserved in the house called the cabinet of curiosities. During the 18th Century, the development of encyclopedism created more interest in different curiosities from nature and more scientific approach was added to the objects. This aspect increased during the Victorian era, in the 19th century, with the great scientific expeditions such as the one carried out by the naturalist Charles Darwin, whose observations of the variations between species in the different islands of the Galapagos Islands, gave him clues to develop his theory of evolution by natural selection that would end up being published under the title The Origin of Species. The development of the taxidermy technique produced a popularity in the collection of these objects, as it allowed the specimens to be enjoyed at home with their natural habitats faithfully reproduced. To protect the exotic creatures, they were covered with glass hoods specially designed by the taxidermists for this purpose.

In Nada de nada...todo, the artist, is inspired by that Victorian imprint of preserving the exotic. The work consists of four glass bells, where the artist preserves a small desiccated bird along with three other objects derived from the same specimen. In the first bell, the viewer can observe the image of a small bird, which despite being painted in gold to highlight its unusual beauty, also conveys a sense of great fragility. Underneath the figure the artist places a mirror where she makes it evident that the little bird is hollow. Perhaps the bird was a defenseless nestling, as suggested by the posture of its body and its closed eyes; one that although covered with feathers could not fend for itself and died. The abdominal cavity of the bird denotes the absence of viscera. Based on this peculiarity, the artist decided to fill the cavity with plaster, to then create a plaster cast that she painted in gold, representing the absence of the bird's entrails. This hollowed-out piece includes the mark of its seven pairs of ribs, and reveals the extension of the sternum, which in life would have served as an anchorage for the flight muscles. The artist then replicates the two pieces in fused glass. The work is a statement of intent, sine anima nemo potest vivere.

Inside one of the birds that Rivera found near his house, she found a tubular structure with cartilaginous rings, which widened at the terminal part as a kind of balloon. The finding turned out to be the trachea of a bird, from this discovery arose the work The Call. Not having vocal cords, birds produce sounds by means of air vibrations that pass through this organ in the shape of a balloon. The syrinx, at the base of the trachea, is the vocal organ of birds. Using the syrinx, birds can emit the learned songs of their species, including imitating the human voice. The vocalization of bird sounds allows them to communicate and send different messages to members of their species and even to other species. They also serve to alert of possible dangers, to defend their territory, and to attract potential mates during the mating season. There are species of birds that have learned to vocalize up to two thousand different songs.

Aware of the importance of the syrinx in birds, the artist submits the trachea to a restoration process, models a replica of the syrinx, paints it in gold and finishes by protecting it with a glass bell. The use of the golden coating is significant, because gold, besides being valued for its physical characteristics, has been venerated by the most ancient civilizations of the world for its association with the eternal, the sublime, the divine, as well as with power and material wealth. The trachea and the golden syrinx make the spectator internalize a sensation of inscrutable silence. A silence that serves as a reflective pause to understand what a sky without music can be. What once was is no longer, is a wake-up call, the extinction crisis is silencing music on the planet. Since the publication of Rachel Carson's famous book, Silent

Spring, in the United States alone the bird population has declined by nearly 3 billion and the number continues to rise. The conceptual strength of the work means that it can be venerated as a reliquary, and the trachea with the golden syrinx, as a decidedly transhistorical relic, as a kind of memento mori. The piece rests on a glass shelf that protrudes from the wall with the silhouette of a bird etched in acid, which by its expressive value, accentuates the intentionality of the work.

The idea of the cabinet of curiosities extends to a light box that serves as a vitrine, which Rivera has titled                          Fin de cuentas. As is well known, the display cases of art objects entail a special concentration. In the work, the artist shows us several elements that form an ensemble that increases or decreases in size depending on how it is observed. Two pairs of golden wings interact with 13 fused glass birds, some gilded, presented next to five glass plates showing the silhouettes of acid-etched bird figures. Some of the elements are placed inside the vitrine on a linen cloth, others on the glass surface. The wings on display seem ready to regain the ability to fly, like Pygmar's after his amorous encounter with Barbarella in the film directed by Roger Vadin, or like the Hawkmen as they bravely engage in combat in aid of Flash Gordon in the film directed by Mike Rhodes. The wings, one of the most sophisticated strategies developed by nature, belong to the planet's sentinels, the birds, those that human beings day by day idetermined to exterminate. The viewer can observe in the work that the artist defies any hint of subjectivity. The artist does not want to offer answers that engage the viewer, but to generate concerns in him. Without falling into the easy artifice, the artist presents a demanding work, neat in detail, focused on the good execution of the technique and the optimal treatment of materials, such as glass, a difficult material to use because its effectiveness depends on the quality of the light that illuminates it. The poetics of the work lies precisely in this type of approach to matter and form, to the relationship between opacity and transparency, to the fine line that separates the real and the symbolic, its anchorage in the past and its absence in the present.

The work that unifies this exhibition and gives it meaning as an installation is The Empty Song. The piece, made up of six iron platforms, five of them with wooden surfaces and one of them with a molten glass surface, contains 36 porcelain turned vessels and 20 porcelain nests on them. One of the nests, the largest of all, is placed on a wooden base which in turn rests on a fused glass surface. The piece contrasts two different ways of making technology: the one applied by the birds in the construction of the nests, and the human one, developed over time through cognitive processes to create containers. In the case of birds, being an oviparous animal, the creation of nests is an evolutionary strategy that emerges from the need to incubate eggs until hatching. In the case of humans, the need to store surplus food for times of famine led them to develop a technique for making terracotta vessels. As the centerpiece of the exhibition, the work maintains a direct relationship with the space, a situation that arises from the combination of the construction strategies employed and the articulation of its plastic language. The pieces do not hide how they have been made. In the case of the nests, the artist has submerged them in various mixtures of liquid porcelain and with copper carbonate and engobes in various proportions to enrich the color tones. The nests, when subjected to the high temperatures of the kiln, disappear, leaving only the trace that the porcelain retains of them. This process is somewhat reminiscent of the ashes encapsulated inside two sheets of glass and that are part of his installation Palingénesis (2014-2016). The vessels have been turned on the potter's wheel creating organic, subtle, curved and harmonic forms that betray a premeditated associative order. They are vessels that seem to have been worked to find the right shape so that they seem to be inhabited, not by silence, but by sound. The vessels, like the canopic vessels that guarded the viscera of the dead in ancient Egypt, seem to be the guardians of a special sound that can only come from the syrinx of a bird.

The artist does not want to induce trickery or deception. She explains that what is heard through the openings of the containers is the recording of a sound emitted by a Maori

aborigine imitating the call of a Huia, a bird endemic to the North Island of New Zealand, extinct since the beginning of the 20th century. Due to the mass extermination of species, many chicks do not learn the song of their elders, which can only be transmitted by a process of learning from generation to generation. If a bird does not know the mating song, for example, this results in an irretrievable decline in the species' population and, in the worst case, in its total extinction. More and more birds lose their ability to sing and die. Many are of the opinion that the omen contained in Rachel Carson's fable is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, the aesthetic proposal presented by Rivera transcends in itself what could well be a tenebrous discourse, because beyond appearances, it is the combination of the absent and the present that transcends in beauty. The imitation of the sound of birdsong heard through the carefully hidden horns in some of the porcelain vessels, makes the viewer exceed the inherent beauty of the work, taking him/her to an emotional level that complements and consolidates the auditory fact. The artist wants to merge art and life, and she achieves this by creating an enveloping atmosphere that alters the visual and acoustic perceptions of the viewer.

A work that attracts the attention is Entrampamiento. The artist rescues a burned tree trunk, which serves to structure a piece in which three pigeon decoys painted black, revolve around a digitally printed image that recreates the devastating flames of forest fires. The subject of fires is one of great interest to the artist, because although natural fires are beneficial for the proper functioning of many ecosystems, fires viciously caused by humans are a real threat to the conservation of important forests and a devastating situation for their biological diversity. It is a proven fact that in recent years, most of the fires have been caused by the greed of the agro- livestock industries, which seek more land for large monocultures and pastures for their animals. These fires produce massive exterminations of wild flora and fauna. Many of the victims of these extinctions are birds, which, due to their protective instinct, are charred to death along with their nests, eggs or chicks. Other birds suffer injuries that will prevent them from fleeing and migrating, eventually dying of starvation. The birds that do manage to migrate, generally do so at the wrong time, which causes the great majority of them not to resist the journey, due to lack of sufficient body fat to support the displacement and die in the attempt. Many others die of asphyxiation due to the toxicity of the smoke, which causes serious lung damage. Fires also cause lasting effects on birds, such as stress, loss of habitat and territory. Their diet is also affected by the loss of fruit trees and the depletion of arthropod insects, small fish, amphibians and reptiles on which they depend for food. In terms of habitats, many of them will never recover or return to the same biodiversity. Some habitats, especially those in rainforests, may take more than a century to return to the way they were. The burning of forests is also the open face of the genocide of indigenous peoples, their wisdom and culture. In the face of this barbaric panorama, indifference is impossible.

Another of the pieces in the exhibition is Murmurio, a video in which the artist recounts what is happening with birds and their relationship with what is happening on the planet. The video starts with the soundtrack of “El canto de los pájaros,” composed by Pablo Casals, and with the marvelous and hypnotic synchronized choreography of a murmur of thousands of starlings. The music of the cello sounds like a lullaby, but also like a lament. The four strings of the instrument, with their baritone timbre, contribute to the melancholic tone of the song. Also melancholy is the rhythmic dance of the murmuring starlings. The starlings perform this choreography at dusk, over their resting place, to scare away predators before going to sleep. Little by little, image upon image is superimposed, changing the tone of the video. Large cities appear as seen from a bird's eye view. The grain of the image gives the sensation of contamination and some frames seem to replicate the disorientation suffered by the intoxicated birds. The images of the felling of land dedicated to agro-livestock industries, power lines and other calamities faced by these animals, seem to foretell bad omens. Those that were once sentinels, fall in a real, not metaphorical way. At the end of the video, a road appears full of

hundreds of dead birds, who knows if by any of the many consequences of the prevailing environmental crisis. Of all omens, there is nothing worse than that of a dead bird.

In La ruta trazada, a series of birds desiccated by the sun, bathed in white liquid porcelain and completely disappeared after having been subjected to the high temperatures in ceramic kilns. These are accompanied by other specimens made of wire and dipped in tar, to simulate the schematic shapes of birds. The array of ghostly specimens is displayed on a wooden surface with a black painted border. The image is stark and eloquent: the silent presence of death. Contrasting the memory of the beautiful specimens of colorful plumage that abounded in the skies or those that are perfectly preserved in natural science museums. The image, in spite of the cadaverous set that it shows, does not provoke rejection. In its crudeness, the work seems to question the limits between humans and other species. It is as if the human species sees in this image its own mortality and the process of death itself: from rigor mortis, to the shrunken and withered body, from putrefaction to ossification. The enormous symbolic charge of the piece projects the imbalance that occurs in nature every time a new species disappears. This can be interpreted as part of the vital cycle of life.

Rivera closes the show with an artist's book in a multi-exemplary edition titled Signos y celajes, which includes drawings and photograms of birds. But they are not birds that arise from a scientific concern but from an aesthetic reflection. The birds that have always been symbols of divinity, of the messages of the gods and of the omens they send us as a warning, serve here as carriers of unfathomable mysteries. The book is a collection of photograms of lifeless birds and digitally manipulated pencil drawings. It alludes both to the ancient beliefs of interpreting the behavior of birds as predictions, and to the fact of seeing in these same bird behaviors indications of the inescapable impact of humans on nature, the destruction of ecosystems, the environmental crisis and climate change. Beyond the need to record what seems to be a mysterious riddle, something that goes beyond all of the above, the book itself is an impeccable aesthetic exercise, a fictitious recovery of the aesthetic memory and the steps and sensations to reach it. The practice of drawing allows the artist to give visual form to thoughts and concepts in a more immediate way, but with a thoroughness that allows her to represent what is observed in compositions that arouse uneasiness. The phantasmagoric silhouettes of birds in red or white on black are a resource similar to the one she uses in the pieces she etches on glass with acid. The book Signos y celajes arises from an ecological conscience and the search for a plausible image, comprising, as in the entire exhibition, a great metaphorical load and an extremely poetic expression.

Text translated from the Spanish by DeepL.