Fabrizio Cotognini, the dead bestiary, 2010, cm 200 x 200, organic media on paper, courtesy of the artist and Prometeogallery of Ida Pisani.

The project of “The dead bestiary” makes a contemporary reflection on the concept of migration-immigration.
For this reason I decided to work on the metaphor of the Bird, eternal representation of the soul and therefore of men’s spiritual side. In this piece the bird loses the symbolic value strictly connected to Medieval physiologist, even maintaining its very iconography, it is represented by a contemporary metaphor, assuming that behaviour, proper of the individual inside society: i.e. cuckoo’s pettiness, blue rock thrush’s intimacy, the strength of Mars’ woodpecker, etc. Birds become subjects of a moving pun. Migration-immigration. Two parallel and opposite themes. Migrations displacement, that animals regularly make, can be periodic (seasonal), can follow precise paths (usually it is always the same track), can cover very long distances, but they always get back to the start. In this case the bird answers his natural instinct, while immigration is a permanent or temporary settlement of groups of people in a place which is not their hometown. This phenomenon is usually caused by socio-political situations. The piece wants to be a calembour that enable the audience to be part of this contemporary exodus.