Simurgh

About the work

The largest of Katia Kameli's ceramic sound sculptures, Simurgh embodies the mythical bird that the flock seeks at the end of its journey. In Farid ud-Din Attar's twelfth-century Persian poem The Conference of the Birds, a flock sets out across seven valleys in search of its king; Kameli's installation gives each bird a body and a voice. Sound rises from within the glazed form, and the work stands at the conceptual centre of the exhibition, where the birds discover that the king they sought is a reflection of themselves.