For the installation Birds at 5 o’clock in the Morning (Diorama), we are invited to step into the metaphorical and literal spaces we have built for animals, whether for spectacle, entertainment or exploitation. Here, the animal turns its gaze upon us, and we suddenly become exhibits, subjects to be domesticated, looked at, observed. 

Consider this experience: You find yourself in a dark room. The ground is unstable. You have no space. The smell unsettles you. You don’t like what you’re feeling. But it has the reassuring familiarity of sadness. You’re in nature. Amongst trash. You’re in your living room. They are looking at you from behind the window. You’re in the diorama. But on the other side of it. You’re the one that has constructed this room. The owls stand still in the dark between the twigs and look at you. They are looking at you with a gaze you have learned to interpret as strict. You look again. It’s not strict but serious. It’s no time for jokes. Maybe they’re just looking at a reflection. The memory of your reflection on the glass. You have already disappeared. 

____________________

In the poster works entitled Birds at 5 o’clock in the Morning, Tsoumplekas assembles various fragmented images and words –  drawn from art history, media and culture more broadly – things he considers as the wreckage of our time. These elements are layered into a digital collage announcing a catastrophe that has already occurred. Each poster incorporates lines borrowed from a different poet, forming a poem-assemblage – an ode to our collective demise. The collages work in tandem with captions, allowing the viewer to trace the origin of each visual component, enabling a process of looking, searching, and interpreting that each spectator can navigate on their own. Together, these images speak of the unimaginable destruction that humans inflict on their biotope, each other and on non-human life.