Unnatural Light: A Struggle for SurvivalTue Sep 23 2025
My project, Unnatural Light: A Struggle for Survival, draws on the myth of Icarus to reflect on the contemporary crisis faced by migratory birds. Just as Icarus fell when he mistook the sun for freedom, countless birds today are ensnared by artificial light at night (ALAN). In the luminous labyrinth of cities, they mistake streetlights and illuminated towers for the sun itself. Drawn into this dazzling trap, they collide with glass and steel, their fragile lives extinguished in silence.
To explore this unseen tragedy, I employ a reclaimed wooden suitcase as both stage and vessel, transforming it into a portable theatre. Once opened, the suitcase reveals a miniature city—a labyrinth of light that doubles as a snare, luring birds like moths to a flame. This hybrid installation integrates projection, shadow, and object theatre, culminating in a short experimental film. The suitcase functions as both archive and stage: an object that carries memory, migration, and displacement, while also embodying the tension between myth and ecology.
The work seeks to illuminate the fragile balance between human progress and nonhuman survival. By reframing birds not merely as symbols of freedom but as vulnerable actors in an ecological drama, the project exposes the overlooked costs of human illumination. Audiences are invited to step into this miniature theatre and confront the paradox of light: a force of beauty and knowledge, yet also of disorientation and loss.
Ultimately, Unnatural Light: A Struggle for Survival is not only a meditation on the fate of birds but also a reflection on human responsibility. It asks how we might rethink our relationship with the artificial brightness we have cast upon the world, and whether we can allow space for other lives to endure within it.