These vestiges have a ghost-like quality to them, lending the birds the appearance of creatures that were once among the living and that now exist in a state of limbo. Hovering undecided between heaven and earth, life and death, they are nothing but the fragile, withering remains of the feathered animals they once were.

Shamir’s specimens are far removed from the collections of stuffed birds typically found in Renaissance cabinets of wonder. Quite on the contrary, these contemporary evocations of living creatures allude to processes of disintegration, dissolution, and decomposition. Like vestiges of species that no longer exists, they are traces whose airborne flight may be regarded as a disappearing act, a process of extinction taking place right before our eyes.

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