Exhibition // Erik Berglin – The Bird Project

“The Bird Project”, that Erik Berglin will present at the 2023 festival edition, is a long-term work that he created over a period of twelve years, between 2006 and 2017. He wheat-pasted hand cut photographs of birds in cities all over the world. The birds, which were all in natural size, were placed at selected locations to then be documented photographically by the artist himself.

At the end of the project, 4982 photographs showing various bird-species, were wheat pasted in twelve cities around the world: Gothenburg (2006) Berlin (2007) Tel Aviv (2008) Casablanca (2009 New York (2010), Reykjavik (2011) Madrid (2012) Malmö (2013) Rio de Janeiro (2014) Buenos Aires (2015) London (2016) and Stockholm (2017). The process for the project began by sourcing ornithology books in antiquarian bookshops as well as libraries. Appropriate images were first scanned, then edited and reprinted again. The next step revolved all around cutting out the images with scissors and a scalpel in order to free them from the paper. This project combines various fields, such as ornithology, storytelling and street art/street photography.