The Hatching
Stone sculpture, part of The Hatching in Art Rotterdam 2025
The Hatching (2025) is an installation that explores the connection between nature and modern tools through the figures of a falcon and a drone. It was made with the idea of putting the public in a certain mood of wonder and inquiry, rahter than giving a fixed narrative; the actors in the video act as unreliable narrators, morphing into one another through visual effects and the installation's physical set up. This one features a series of sculptures that combine materials such as stone, glass, wax and metal, and play with the contrast between organic forms and hard materials; alongside them there is a video installation consisting of a projection on top of two glass panels, meant to be positioned in a corner of the space, one panel reflecting what's projected on the other and creating ghost-like reflections.
The inspiration for this work comes from an initiative of a group of catalan farmers who decided to use drones to prevent birds from damaging their crops; driven I curiosity, I researched the various ways in which people have been trying to exert their influence on the land via the air. For this, I returned to my hometown of Barcelona, where I visited the city archives and interviewed Ondroj, a falconer who uses trained birds to keep airports safe from bird strikes. He explained how real falcons are more effective than drones because they trigger a natural fear response in other birds—something machines can’t replicate. When technology fails to do what we created it for, we cycle back to using the animals this technology took inspiration from. It's an eternal loop, which The Hatching takes inspiration from.
Video installation on the right, and glass, wax and tin sculpture on the left, part of The Hatching in Art Rotterdam 2025
Still of the video