A Near and a Far

Of the 350 species of hummingbird known to exist in the Americas, only the Ruby Throated migrates to the eastern half of North America to breed. Each fall it heads south, flying 500 miles over the Gulf of Mexico, to its wintering grounds in Central Mexico.  

A Near and a Far is a series of projects that I am currently developing, that follow the Ruby Throated hummingbird through space and time to Central Mexico 444 years ago. 

These projects explore a 400 year old manuscript intended to be a comprehensive “encyclopedia” documenting Aztec civilization before it disappeared.   Written by a group of Nahua scholars in “collaboration” with a Spanish friar, the manuscript bears witness, through indigenous eyes, to the loss of Aztec culture due to Spanish conquest, relentless epidemics, and drought. Titled, The General History of the Things of New Spain, it is also known as The Florentine Codex after Florence, Italy, where it is held. It is written in both Nahua (the language of the Aztecs) and Spanish. 

In Aztec culture the threshold between human and animal is fluid and reciprocal; and the hummingbird is paramount. Birds are a conduit between human and animal. They have influenced my work in myriad ways.  They move fluidly between earth and sky, place to place, and culture to culture, carrying stories with them through time.

The Near and the Far:  Left Side of the World
2020 

Materials:  mirrorized glass, cast crystal hummingbird bodies, aluminum, light  
Dimensions 74" H  x  27 1/8" W  x  27 1/8" L
Photographs by John Groo 

A Near and a Far: Left Side of the World, the first works in this series is comprised of two sculptural glass cases that create a three dimensional “exploded view” of a book.  ( images show the first case – the second is in process) 

Pages from the Florentine Codex - specifically describing the life cycle and behaviors of hummingbirds - are stenciled on two-way mirror panels that extend from corner to corner, intersecting in the center.  Fused upon each mirrored panel is half of a hummingbird body cast out of Gold Ruby crystal.  The bird bodies appear to be half bodies from certain angles and, then, appear to become whole in reflection.  In response to the movements of the viewer, bird bodies fuse with one another, causing infinite variations of optical anomalies as the birds shift between fragment and whole, one and two, two and many; and, at times, appear to vibrate, hovering in place, and then, shift from side to side and up and down, as if alive. The book, in essence, is deconstructed and reconfigured constantly as the viewer moves around the work.

Information/image/material within each of these works, conjures hummingbirds and the stories they carry with them through time and space. Simultaneously, the optical affects reference manifestations of translation: from oral to written, image to text, time and space, human to animal, and from culture to culture. By stenciling the text and images of the Florentine Codex onto the mirrored panels, within the structure, the words/images of the Nahua voice stenciled in mirror, are at once; present and absent; exemplifying the difficulty of recovering voices from the past and reconciling them with the present.