Ghosts, 2021

Maurizio Cattelan

Narrator: The work “Ghosts” consists of hundreds of stuffed pigeons sitting here and there along the walls and ceiling of the exhibition.
 
Stuffed pigeons were first used by Cattelan in a work in 1997, in the Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennale – the major international art exhibition that is held in Venice every two years. Then, the work was called “Tourists”, alluding to the crowds of tourists that descend on Venice and leave a mess wherever they go – for instance when they feed the pigeons at the Piazza San Marco. Here, the pigeons might have been regarded as “flying rats” that spread rubbish and destruction.
 
The pigeons returned to the Venice Biennale in 2011, but this time they were mounted on the façade of the main exhibition venue, the International Pavilion, and called “Others”. This new title suggested an “Us” and a “Them”, a sorting or ranking of the people who populate the urban space. The installation of the pigeons, on the outside of the pavilion, now raised the question of who is allowed inside the sacred halls of art, and who is excluded.
 
At Moderna Museet, the pigeons in the exhibition are quite ghost-like as they perch above the visitors. They accompany us on our walk through the galleries, like silent witnesses of what goes on at the exhibition.