• Children For or Against the Destruction of Birds series 2014 Graphite on paper, 42 x 59.9 cm each. Exhibition view Emma Waltraud Howes. The Time it Takes, Musée d'art de Joliette, 2024. Photo: Paul Litherland

  • Children For or Against the Destruction of Birds series 2014 Graphite on paper, 42 x 59.9 cm each. Exhibition view Emma Waltraud Howes. The Time it Takes, Musée d'art de Joliette, 2024. Photo: Paul Litherland

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Children For or Against the Destruction of Birds series
The Time it Takes

2014

xviiia-1a. During China’s socio-economic Great Leap Forward period of 1958-1962, led by Mao Zedong, citizens, as part of the infamous Four Pests campaign, were encouraged to bang pots and set off fireworks in order to exterminate sparrows. The noise created deterred the birds from resting, forcing them to fly until the point of exhaustion, where their tiny hearts burst from pure physical exertion.

The sixteen drawings from this series, seven of which are presented here, are based on a single photograph from the 1930s or 1940s of children protesting against the extermination of birds in the Soviet Union. Information on this image has been misplaced or lost in translation… Was it an annual celebration as part of Birds’ Day? A school activity to distract themselves from Stalinist repression? A way to denounce famine and war by bypassing censorship? One thing is certain: these bird masks are a plea to humanity. This series is part of Howes’s research on masks and elements of disguise as strategies of embodiment and empathy through mimesis. These signs don’t need words. Sometimes we make noise to kill birds; other times, it’s to save them.

The eradication of a species can upset an entire ecosystem, one in which humans—as we tend to forget—are an integral part. The extermination of sparrows in China caused an ecological imbalance that led to the Great Famine, killing over thirty million people. Humans suffer from the destruction of their environment, and will continue to do so. How much longer will the canary in the coal mine sing?

Exhibition History

  • The Time it Takes
    2024
    Musee d'art de Joliette
    Joliette, CA

Related Publication

Acknowledgements

This exhibition is made possible by the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Superframe Framing Fund.

Part of The Time it Takes Project
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