Sal Higgens
Mourning Chorus24 February - 7 March
The bird as a symbol of the human soul can be traced back through art history to Ancient Egypt. 3,000 years ago the Egyptian hieroglyph Ba represented the non-physical personality of a person, what we today refer to as the soul. The Ba was the spiritual aspect of the human being that survived, or came into being, after death.
Today, in an era post the declaration of “the death of painting” the soul of painting lives on. If painting is dead, long live the spirit of painting. Here the human headed bird symbolizes the soul, a butchered spirit. I am interested in depicting the soul as its own fleshy being. The soul laid bare, naked as a slab of meat. The chicken and the painter morphed. This is my lament, my Mourning Chorus.