Using her own body, Cecilia Paredes’s photo performance suggests a connection among all living beings and a shared experience of the life cycle. She is shown on a bed of leaves, with taxidermied birds on her back, borrowed from the Natural History Museum in Costa Rica, where the artist lived for 24 years. To evoke memory and migration, Paredes transforms her body to merge with her environment.
"Part of what makes us human is our ability to see beyond the narrow door through which we enter the world—to grow beyond the culture of our birth by recognizing other cultures, other patterns of life. Yet our birth culture is always imprinted upon us; the mystery of identity is never fully resolved. We are always from a time and place to which we can never return." — Cecilia Paredes.