1,156 III - 2,121 I (from the series "Neornithes/Hair")

Contemporary artist Gabriel de la Mora works at the intersection of drawing, weaving and painting. This diptych is part of a larger series of works made of turkey feathers and human hair. Working with a large team, De la Mora cuts, pastes and arranges these materials into geometric compositions evocation of the work of mid-century modernists like Josef Albers. The simplicity of the resulting shapes belies the complexity of the artist's process. In the case of the featherwork, De la Mora begins with an array of dyed turkey feathers, cuts out sections of each feather to achieve a uniform color, then carefully glues these small cut squares onto a paper backing. The process is linked to the historic craft of Mexican featherwork, as discussed below.

For De la Mora, the feather and hairpieces are both linked to an abiding interest in expanding the process of drawing. "In 2004, I decided to give my pictorial work a rest and return to drawing, without resorting to traditional techniques. I began by writing 30 or so definitions of my conception of drawing. After working on refining the list, I was left with only one definition: 'Drawing is a collection of points and lines that convey an image, idea, or concept on paper.' I then decided to use hair to represent the lines." Interested in the symbolic connotations of hair, and later, in the possibilities of the fragment and the surgical precision required to work at an extremely small scare, De la Mora has experimented with making "drawings" out of materials, including broken egg shells, pieces of shoe soles, daguerreotypes and ultimately turkey feathers as here.

The diptych is a powerful and important work for the MFA collection because it links contemporary culture to the art of the past. Feathers and hair are materials with long histories in the Art of the Americas. The diptych is connected to eighteenth and nineteenth century hair jewelry and to works in the collection like the Mexican feather painting acquire in 2015 (2015.3292). This picture belongs to a rare type created in Mexico during the 16-17th centuries, De la Mora, who works in Mexico City; see his work as directly in line with this tradition. Featherwork was among the most valuable and prized artistic media of the Mixtec (Nahua) and Maya cultures during the pre-Hispanic period. Feather artists (amantecas) were trained to create images that would be suitable for a European audience, in particular religious scenes, often with the aid of European print sources.