Added Feb 20, 2024
HERE IS A LINK TO ACCESS MY VIRTUAL ART EXHIBITION:
https://www.artsteps.com/view/6581e957f13310a7ada68b60
Pigeons have thousands of years of history intertwined with ours, they symbolize peace, faith, fidelity, love, hope and happiness. The reality of their lives though and how they are unfairly rejected or mistreated by us nowadays is not so glorious for our own image as humans. Here is my ''Call To Pigeons - 2023'' art project, featuring a series of art portraits and gathering contemporary rescue stories about pigeons. As my art project grew and developed came the necessity to create an art book which would be the result of a year of work on the subject. A book made with love, which can be read by adults, by teenagers, or read to children, a meaningful edition that inspires and encourages the good in humans. The original art illustrations are all 7''x10''. With the perspective of a virtual presentation, I chose an industrial setting as pigeons try to survive in urban environments, with a ceiling opening to the sky. Each exhibited artwork would be an archival print at a large scale, here 118.11'' x 118.11''. Each one of these rescued birds has an incredible and unique story of survival and resilience that inspires respect, and I also selected some of my daily flock live portraits that I created at the beach where I feed pigeons that became regulars. Pigeon rescue is not an isolating thing that has no impact, it is a true and authentic movement that is happening worldwide, spreads and grows with strength and conviction each day, whether through the love and dedication of independent individuals or with the work of rescue organizations that bring awareness and educate, such as Great Lakes Pigeon Rescue and Palomacy, among so many more. Pigeons are in fact incredibly complex and intelligent animals. They have been with us for ten thousands years (Mesopotamian tablets mention their domestication more than 5,000 years ago, while Egyptian hieroglyphics tells that domestication happened as early as 10,000 years ago). They are considered as the first bird species to be domesticated by humans. Pigeons, also called doves, have been a longtime source of inspiration and even served as messengers of the gods. Pigeons appear in all religions. For thousands of years, they served us as messengers as well, we literally built our human history and empires thanks to them. They saved numerous humans lives, during wars (WW1, WW2 for the most recent ones), and were celebrated, honored and decorated with honorific medals such as the Dickin Medal. They also saved lives of numerous humans lost at sea... We owe them so much. In documentation from the late 19th century, humans show compassion to pigeons, condemning the sport of pigeon shooting. Early in the next century, the opinion suddenly changed. Pigeons became a problem between the 1950's and the 1960's, when people started to dislike them and consider them as a nuisance. They were framed by several officials as ''menacing'' vermin to get rid of ''because of their stools''. But you could say the same about all living animals. Pigeon zoonotic diseases? In truth, epidemiologists who know about diseases and viruses, say that pigeons extremely rarely interact in ways which could make us sick. So why have people only very recently decided to hate them?....The issue is not anything that pigeons do, but how we see them and the spaces we share with them. The recent false idea and misleading information from pests companies, making an online propaganda about pigeons to be seen as pests, is a SYMPTOM OF PEOPLE' S IDEA THAT THE URBAN ENVIRONMENTS WE BUILD ARE SEPARATE FROM NATURAL ONES. THAT THERE IS A LINE THAT SEPARATES ''CIVILIZATION'' AND UNCONTROLLED NATURE. We decide to build a parking, we cut all the existent native trees and destroy natural habitats, to replant chosen trees in some little squares cut in the concrete, and that is where the trees should be. We don't like when the grass begins to grow through cracks of the tarmac, because that is NATURE BREAKING OUT OF LIMITS THAT WE WANT TO KEEP IT IN. Pigeons cross those borders imagined by humans everyday, naturally sharing the same urban space than us. By peacefully transgressing our controlled vision of the city, pigeons show us that nature in the city does exist and gives life to its monotonous grey buildings. Their peaceful freedom is just enough to raise hate. Condemned as epidemiological threat despite actually being extremely poor sources of diseases, pigeons became unfairly a health menace, supported by misleading and false information. But, how sad would be our cities without those graceful flights in the sky and kind feathered hearts? Pigeons were domesticated by humans, abandoned by them, and only very recently have been shamed for their existence. Absolutely no animal is disposable and should have to suffer such merciless consequences for the only crime of living. It is our responsibility as humans to help them, to take care of them. That is why it is important to have people like you who care to fight against animal cruelty and animal abandonment.