Still Life

The Still Life cycle, created by Sun Hee Moon between 2020 and 2022, includes about fifteen oil paintings and a large installation made up of a few thousand birds (starlings). Born from a first example modeled in clay, the project was gradually expanded up to the current state. Settled the subject, it has become the protagonist of some initial canvases, in which it is represented in an interior (the artist's workspace), in dialogue with elements of everyday life. With the constant increase in the number of little birds made, the artist embarked on a sort of design study, pictorially
visualizing the multitude of sculptural outcomes now as a horizontal spatial occupation (Comunità), now as a suspended installation (La carriola). If in a canvas you see a female figure surrounded by a dozen species suspended, as if to stage fresh possibilities for dialogue between
work and spectator, in another (The bride), reminiscent of the Renaissance iconographic archetype but set in a garage, the detail of the birds is confined to a headdress (Bride hat). The beating heart of the cycle is represented by the large installation of starlings. The thousands of
specimens modeled over the course of nearly three years have been placed in the space to create a veritable own flock. It summarizes a stratified series of meanings related to the circumstances in which it was born - the first lockdown -, up to a broader reflection on the relationship between the human being and its environment, as well as on the model of collective relationship between individuals. With this installation, in fact, the artist intends to open a dual perspective, centered on the teachings that can be drawn from the natural world, for a hypothesis of resistance and care. If at a general level the intent is to recall the naturalness of the cycles of life, death and rebirth, at the same time refers to the ability to adapt manifested by nature precisely in that period of forced retreat of human beings, instilling the hope of the possible restoration of a minimal condition of balance and sustainability in the relationship with the ecosystem. The exponential increase of their number, up to the development in an installation sense, has matured from a reflection on an innate ability of the starlings, capable of giving rise to large but perfectly coordinated groups in their mesmerizing aerial choreography. The artist sees in it the key to rethinking not only a valid operating model in the pandemic contingent – the coordination of individual actions premises as a survival factor for the community as a whole – but the starting point for a more structural rethinking of the functioning of the social body. Cognitively limited in the management of its interactions, the starlings perform few and simple choices that always and necessarily agree with those of the similar ones that fly next to him.

​

Nicolò Faccenda