Carlos Garaicoa

Over the centuries, birds have played an important role as messengers of divine will. From ‘auspices’ – omens based on the observation of the flight of birds by augurs (ancient Roman religious officials who read the signs to interpret the will of the gods) – to the story of Genesis, which tells us that at the end of the Flood, Noah released a dove from the Ark and the bird returned with an olive branch, signalling that land was re-emerging, the birds’ gaze, which has access to the ends of the earth and the vault of heaven, has been a constant presence across history. In short, birds have always been ‘listened to’.

In Listen to the Birds Flying Carlos Garaicoa’s new exhibition at the Rocca Maggiore of Assisi, this message is current again, returning to the present as admonition and hope. For this exhibition, the work of the Cuban artist, who explores the concept of city as symbolic space, expressed in often immersive installations, traces back over the history of the medieval fortress, at the same time paying homage to Assisi’s pre-eminent citizen, St Francis. Although the military bastion was not one of the saint’s prime destinations (in part because it was destroyed in 1198 and not rebuilt until 1365), his eye would have rested on more than one occasion on the massive structure overlooking the city, while eyeing, listening to the creatures he had begun talking to. And so, it is with this synaesthesia of listening to flight that the story Carlos Garaicoa is telling us begins.