Memento Mori: The 100 Dead Birds Project

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Artist: Carol Eckert

Title: Memento Mori: The 100 Dead Birds Project

Attribution: Memento Mori(detail) 2019, Carol Eckert

Year: 2019

Materials: cotton, linen, wire

Dimensions: variable

Image Statement: In early 2019, I began “Memento Mori: The 100 Dead Birds Project,” chronicling humans’ impact on birds. In the early stages of creating the piece, I posted on Instagram requesting images of dead birds, with a plan to create a floor sculpture of one hundred individual birds, each coiled from cotton and linen. The first image to appear on my phone was a Common Koel that collided with a window in Far North Queensland. Over the following months I added an Arizona owl electrocuted by a high-tension wire, a flicker found on a New York City street, and a hummingbird spotted on the roof of San Francisco’s de Young Museum, among many others. Though my original goal was 100 birds, the sculpture will continue to grow indefinitely as images arrive from around the world.