Coal & Ash Drawings
Bird in Flight – Cigar Ash Drawing
A body becoming air
Bird in Flight (2024)
Cigar ash on xuan paper.single breath scatters ash into flight. This work turns a rebellious gesture — drawing with cigar ash — into an invocation of freedom.
EN:This work is made entirely with cigar ash — a material that carries for me a deep personal charge. I first began smoking cigars in my early twenties, fascinated by the ritual and by the figures who seemed to embody defiance, like Che Guevara. To draw with ash is to transform an act often seen as rebellious or excessive into a mark of creation.
The bird is an avatar of my subconscious: every time I use cigar ash, I find myself tracing forms connected to adolescent impulses — the urge to do something great, to refuse the quiet obedience often expected of women, to claim a freedom that is both bodily and spiritual.
In this photograph, the moment of creation is frozen: ash explodes and falls, the bird takes shape, wings outstretched, caught between appearance and disappearance. The drawing is not just an image but a residue of performance — the gesture, the breath, the risk that the ash could scatter away before fixing — all are part of the work.
CN:
