Press Release

In his current body of work, Psittaciformes, Yaron Michael Hakim has adopted a formal approach of naturalist illustration to depict imagined anthropomorphic creatures in lush jungle environments. Through these paintings, he examines his South American heritage and the kind of exoticization that has been projected onto him and he, in turn, has projected onto himself.

The artist was initially inspired by the Macaw, the quintessential parrot native to South America. Further research led Hakim to think about the attributes that make parrots so unique—camouflage and their ability to mimic human vocals. For the artist, these characteristics became a metaphor for assimilation and living between cultures. Adopted at birth from his homeland of Columbia, South America, Hakim spent his early life living on three different continents—Australia, Europe, and North America. As the artist states, “I’ve always lived between cultures, trying to assimilate, and in this regard, I’ve come to identify with parrots (including the wild, transplant parrots that like me, that call East Los Angeles home).”

The paintings in this series draw upon multiple source materials, including found parrot photos, personal snapshots, colonial naturalist drawings, and present-day illustrations of parrots. Painted atop re-purposed Dacron sails, the works show signs of weathering, staining, and stitching, adding to be the observational narrative. Left in an unstretched form, the sail cloths also retain their original shape and allude to movement.

As part of this series, Hakim also developed sculptural objects that he calls “nose flutes.” The clay bodies are casts of the artist’s nose and then painted with the vibrant colors and camouflage patterns of various birds, combining human and parrot traits similar to the paintings. The sculptures are also instruments, which the artist has played and recorded the resulting sounds. A sound environment accompanies the experience of the paintings and the sculptures, amplifying the many ways identity and assimilation take shape.

Through these various elements, Hakim presents the conundrum of a hybrid identity. Are you one? Are you the other? Yet, these bird/human creatures also allow for the potential of identity, one that can be simultaneously real, imagined, and projected.