Originally displayed in monumental size under the dome of Crystal Palace (Madrid) the legs worked as a fulcrum of Halilaj’s nest-like installation, seeming to sustain and transcend the space at the same time. The legs brought forward the desire of the artist to integrate and blend the inside with the outside, and to transform the architecture into a giant imaginary bird.
In Here to Remind You, this transformation has reached completion: the work is a scaled version of the same sculpture, in which the space of the architecture is now occupied by an individual and unique feather delicately emerging from the crown of the work and transformingeach sculpture into a special character of the artist’s personal mythology.
Even in their gigantic scale, the legs retained a certain tenderness with the gesture of two fingers gently touching each other, symbolizing the union of two elements supporting each other and becoming one. This gesture is reiterated in the smaller version of the sculpture.
Birds are a recurring figure in Halilaj’s work, a metaphor of the ability to freely overcome geographical boundaries and sociocultural barriers. An attentive observer may notice that most of the artist’s birds are deprived of their most conspicuous feature: wings. This gesture perhaps further aligns the birds to the human realm, and indeed, birds have for long carried meanings of intimacy and relationships for the artist.