The Birds Might Weave It Into Their Nests

The Birds Might Weave it into Their Nest traces Alina Ușurelu's journey from the moment preceding her durational act of cutting her hair in May 2023—a gesture layered with ambivalence, mirroring rebirth within death—to the present.

The Birds Might Weave it into Their Nest traces Alina Ușurelu's journey from the moment preceding her durational act of cutting her hair in May 2023—a gesture layered with ambivalence, mirroring rebirth within death—to the present. This new posthumous temporality enabled the artist to shed an identity shaped as a protective mechanism and also meant the creation of Shuba, a non-human, magical identity companion that embodies human fragility when confronted with societal constructs.

Hair, much like the body, functions as a medium for projecting identity within society, its styling imbued with diverse meanings that shift across gender, age, culture, and religion. In this context, Shuba materializes the artist's existential journey, deeply embedded in her subconscious. Here, hair becomes both a protective garment and an obstacle to reclaiming authenticity.

The severance of Shuba's physical connection occurred during a durational performance symbolizing the ritual act of collective haircutting. This act actualized a process of identity death and the release of a reality mediated by the veil of knotted hair. The performance unfolded amidst the yucca tree, magnolia grandiflora, and carob tree, near the old pines by the entrance to the field. The site held additional significance, as two cats—one pregnant and the other, Gata, a feline companion to many artists at The Plot in Azeitão, Portugal—had been buried there.

Alina Ușurelu employs diverse media, including photography, video performance, and interactive installation, to navigate the intertwining paths of loss and regeneration. Her focus on the practices and mechanisms of loss addresses an often-overlooked topic: the processes of mourning, whether for human or non-human subjects and reconnecting humanity with the natural cycle, where decomposition sustains life as an unspoken, perpetual law.

Within this interpretive framework, Shuba's depictions in varied landscapes reflect the essence of life after death and continuous transformation. Hair evolves from a severed representation of the artist's subconscious into a travelling, multisensory object.

Shuba calls on us to nurture death as a foundation for life, to strip away the veils of identity in the face of the unknown, and to journey authentically through life's manifold possibilities. Perhaps, one day, the fragments we leave behind will find their place in the nests of birds, woven into the continuity of existence.