Blood Feather of a Northern Flicker
Extended text
Blood Feather of a Northern Flicker emerged during a period in which my body began to fail. In 2016, I experienced severe heavy metal toxicity, accompanied by adrenal fatigue, respiratory issues, muscle weakness, and cognitive impairment. Tasks that once felt automatic—walking, reading, breathing—became unstable and uncertain. My body no longer functioned as a cohesive system, but as something fractured, heavy, and unreliable.
At the time, I was living in a Brooklyn loft that was not fully up to code. Though I have never been able to confirm the source of the toxicity, I became increasingly aware of the invisible systems that sustain daily life—water pipes, electrical wiring, structural materials—and how easily they can become compromised. What is concealed behind walls, assumed to be stable and clean, can in fact carry contamination. This realization began to collapse the boundary between the body and the built environment: the architecture that holds us and the biological systems that sustain us became intertwined.
During this period, I encountered a northern flicker in the street. The bird was unable to fly and could barely move. I brought it to a rescue center, where it died a few days later. I felt a profound identification with the bird—its inability to function mirrored my own physical state. When I later looked inside the box I had carried it in, I found a feather left behind. The shaft of the feather was filled with blood; it had fallen out prematurely, before it had fully formed. This “blood feather,” interrupted mid-growth, became a central image for the work.
The sculptures in this series extend from that moment. They are composed of discarded architectural materials—corroded copper pipes, steel I-beams, roller-chain, nails, wire, alabaster remnants, and fragments of radiators—many sourced from renovation sites in New York. These materials, once part of functional systems, are removed from their original context and reassembled into unstable, often precarious forms. The works resist traditional notions of structure and instead exist in a state of tension: balanced, torqued, suspended, or partially collapsed.
Copper plays a central role, both materially and symbolically. As a conductor, copper is associated with energy flow—used globally in systems that generate and transmit power. Yet it is also implicated in toxicity, particularly when present in contaminated water systems. This dual condition—of vitality and danger—parallels the body’s own vulnerability. Similarly, the roller-chain, which recurs throughout the work, behaves differently depending on how it is handled: in one direction it flows with ease, in another it locks under tension. This physical property became a guiding force in the construction of the sculptures, echoing the constraints and resistances of the body itself.
The project extends the metaphor of “body as architecture.” Pipes and cables, typically hidden within walls, function like veins beneath the skin—networks that carry essential resources. When these systems are compromised, the entire structure is affected. In this work, what is usually concealed is brought into view. The interior becomes exterior; the support becomes the subject.
Alongside the sculptural works, the project includes two paintings. One depicts a water dam, while the other reduces that image to its structural lines, traced in copper wire across a dark surface. These works reflect on containment, flow, and control—how water, like blood, must be directed, managed, and held within systems that are never entirely stable.
Throughout the period of illness, I was required to avoid tap water entirely, drinking only from glass bottles to eliminate the risk of further contamination. This restriction produced a heightened awareness of water as a resource—something essential, yet not universally secure. The accumulation of these glass bottles became, in itself, a form of material evidence. The idea of a mound of shattered glass—an installation composed of the remnants of this enforced consumption—emerged as an extension of the work: a fragile, unstable mass that speaks to both survival and excess, necessity and waste.
The materials used in Blood Feather of a Northern Flicker are not neutral. They carry histories of use, extraction, and exposure. Many of them—lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium—are known toxins that accumulate within the body over time. Their presence in the work is both literal and symbolic, pointing to the broader environmental and industrial conditions that shape human health. The work developed alongside, and in the shadow of, events such as the Flint water crisis, where the contamination of a public water supply made visible the systemic failures that disproportionately affect certain communities.
The sculptures do not attempt to resolve these tensions. Instead, they inhabit a space of instability, where breakdown and reconstruction occur simultaneously. A ruin is not simply a site of loss—it is also the beginning of transformation. Through processes of dismantling and reassembly, the work proposes a form of rebuilding that does not return to an original state, but moves toward something altered, uncertain, and potentially more resilient.
In this sense, Blood Feather of a Northern Flicker is not only a reflection on illness, but on the conditions that produce vulnerability—within the body, within architecture, and within the systems that connect them.