The Birthing Nest

Cly's birth ritual symbolizes her progression into a new phase of life. After visualizing the process, she and a close friend, Peter Dodge, spent an entire year preparing the ritual. For this performance, Cly set up an altar with the four main elements: water, fire, air, and earth. Burning candles and electricity represented fire, mud represented earth, and Cly's very breath represented air. After washing her hands in water, Cly placed a mask of mud on her head to symbolize the earth. Then she blew into her hands to simulate the breath of life or air. After these initial steps were completed, music began to play. Cly's performance included interacting with this nest that was joined to the Mother Tree.

The Mother Tree

Cly distributed bound stones to the audience before she engaged in the ritual. During the performance, the audience members presented their stones to Cly. She represented the departure between the nest and the mother tree by severing the nest from the tree. Cly then placed the divination mask on her face to symbolize individuality. She believes that our mortality begins once we are physically cut off from our mother or biological source. Therefore, life and death are interchangeable.

The nest was carried out by chosen members of the audience and left in front of the museum for a month. After the month elapsed, Cly and some friends transported the nest to a designated place in nature. Nine years later, when she and Peter returned to visit the nest, they found that it had either disintegrated or been carried off by animals. Cly was pleased that the nest returned to nature. The cycle of life and death was complete.

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