Forever – Bird Botanicals

David Constantino Salazar, a Toronto based sculptor, is transforming the Gardiner’s Community Arts Space (CAS) into a venue for collective feeling and cooperative thinking with an immersive exhibition featuring a series of over 500 individually hand-sculpted, wall-mounted pieces produced in red clay and created during the one month of Salazar’s residency at the Gardiner. Upon entering the room the viewer is confronted by what appears to be a flock of birds that have flown directly into the wall. There is an ambiguity between the recognizable bird anatomy (feathers/wings) and the plant forms such as orchids and varying foliage that make up each amorphous shape. In this exhibition, Salazar poignantly asks the viewer to contemplate the cultural symbolisms associated with birds such as freedom, love, divinity, peace intertwined with the abrupt juxtaposition of the bird's metaphorical loss of flight.  Salazar continues to lead the viewer to contemplate decomposition and the transformation of the bird's journey into new growth as the work alludes to a continuum metamorphosis and begs the viewer to ponder such questions as to what life looks like after trauma when we individually and in certain circumstances collectively are no longer whom we were before "abruptly flying into that wall".

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Inspired by folk tales and allegories passed on from his grandparents in Ecuador, The underlying narrative proposed by Forever (Bird-Botanicals)  is the act of transformation depicted in a dramatic change in form, mentality, and being. This work takes a metaphorical approach to understand the transfer of one state of being (bird) to another (plant).  Salazar asks us to meditate on the concept of human resilience, an idea especially pertinent as we begin to recover from the impact of the global pandemic.

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Established in 2016, Community Arts Space (CAS) is the Gardiner’s incubator for arts-based projects that build community through clay making. As part of CAS2021, artist David Constantino Salazar presents Forever (Bird-Botanicals) in partnership with members of Workman Arts, a Toronto-based arts organization that promotes a greater understanding of mental health and addiction.

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WORKMAN ARTS is a multidisciplinary arts organization that promotes a greater understanding of mental health and addiction issues through creation and presentation. They support artists living with mental health and addiction issues through peer-to-peer arts education, public presentations, and partnerships with the broader arts community.