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Blue Nest, 2009. Stamen and stencil. Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. 13m(L)x 3m(W)x7m(H). 

One of my first experiments with birds is the Blue Nest ephemeral art project. I carried out the intervention in situ in a public space on a 15-meter-long wall in 2009 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. I chose the wall because it housed dozens of birds in its holes, among them the most common and successful in the city: sparrows and finches that inhabit the disused drains of the wall for short nesting periods, since they migrate to other areas after the first flights of their young.

I wanted to make a portrait of this as an urban art project. I was thinking about making visible the border where our Nature and Human dimensions meet. To make visible how our existence is woven. The bird's cycle of life happens in the same place and time as mine but at a different speed. If you pass by an urban area like this only once time you would not notice this micro environment. You have to live there or nearby so you can get to be aware of this through observation and for a longer period of time.

I built this piece on this wall by making silhouette portraits of the birds nesting on the walls.  It was the beginning of their nesting season and I noticed they like to pick up the grass in the sidewalk but also fibers and trash. I install blue yarn on the floor for them to represent these alienated objects in their circle of life and draw blue lines hanging from their beaks. After one week and a half, I saw the tip of one of the yarns coming out from one of the holes in the wall. I found this small camera that could fit inside the holes and order it. When the camera arrived I had it prepared with a flashlight in the front and tightened up to a long stick so I could reach the highest holes to see what was inside. To my surprise, some of the wholes were empty but others had nests built along with some of the blue yarn I left on the ground. I just had made a collaborative piece with these creatures and I wanted to know more about this behavior.

blue nest