Bio

Rachel Berwick’s multi-media installations examine the threshold between nature and culture as a means of exploring themes of extinction and loss, and our inevitable desire to recover what is lost.  She has had five solo exhibitions in New York—“Lonesome George,” at Sikkema Jenkins in NYC was also included in “Becoming Animal” at Mass MoCA. Her installation, “Zugunruhe” was exhibited at Brown University and The Smithsonian American Art Museum.

For over twenty years, she has developed and maintained a work titled “may-por-é,” in which live parrots she trained to speak, Maypuré, an extinct indigenous South American language, live in a sculptural aviary, exhibited at venues such as The Serpentine Gallery, London, the 7th International Istanbul Bienal, and the 26th Bienal de São Paolo.  

Berwick received a Robert Rauschenberg Residency, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, and a Smithsonian Artists’ Research Fellowship where she first began working on bird migration and structural color in the project titled, “Blue,” a series of sculptural works that she continues to develop today.  Berwick’s exploration of structural color has expanded to include Gold Ruby Red,  the Ruby Throated Hummingbird, and the stories hummingbirds carry with them through time and space.