“He raises his entire crown and focuses all his attention on you and it seems as if he recognizes you completely without you having to utter a single word.”
(Antonio Fernandini Guerrero)

The camera slowly scans the broad and mighty trunk of an emergent tree - a tree that towers above the canopy of the jungle. Branches crack underfoot, leaves and grass rustle. The sounds of insects, birds and monkeys can be heard. You are in the middle of the primeval forest of Madre de Dios, Peru. A male voice follows the rhythm of your steps and tells you about the king of the jungle, the largest eagle in the world, the Harpie eagle.

In his new work Alrededor del dosel / Umgehen der Baumkronen, Peruvian artist David Zink Yi follows in the footsteps of the Harpie eagle, which lives in the jungles of Peru. Two cameras systematically make their way horizontally and vertically through the jungle. The eagle only appears in the description by biologist Antonio Fernandini Guerreros, which oscillates between poetry and science.

It becomes visible only in the viewer’s imagination, in which the dualism of heaven and earth, of eagle and man, seems to dissolve in the mythological figure of the harpy, the hybrid of girl and bird.

In his works, David Zink Yi explores signs, cultural identities, stories and traditions like an ethnographer. In his search for people, sounds and places, the strange and the familiar, he is at once companion, observer and narrator. Beyond any interest in voyeurism or exoticism, Zink Yi creates closeness and intensity in his videos, allowing the viewer to experience the narrative directly and at the same time opening up spaces for their own imagination. The multi-layered stories are only completed in the mind of the viewer.

David Zink Yi, born in 1973 in Lima (Peru), studied fine arts in Munich and Berlin after completing an apprenticeship as a chef and wood carver. In 2004 he received the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship and is this year’s Ars Viva prize winner. Alrededor del dosel / Umgehen der Baumkronen is Zink Yi’s first institutional solo exhibition.

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