Bird, Plane, Butterfly is a perspectivist exploration of stillness, natural connection, and contemplation within the hectic pace of contemporary urban life. Building on her earlier project, Breathing Mountains (2018)—which captured the silence and purity of sacred mountains across Europe and Asia—Antoinette Nausikaä shifts her focus to the rhythms and textures of the city.
Over the past few years, Nausikaä has wandered through major urban centers—such as Tokyo, Madrid, Paris, New York, Beijing, Xiamen—gathering images that reflect the interplay of culture and nature, the timeless and the transient, the organic and the abstract. By zooming in and out and shifting between macro and micro perspectives, she bridges these seemingly opposing experiences.
In this project, photography and ceramic sculpture converge into a poetic narrative of transformation and timelessness. For the first time, Nausikaä introduces large-scale, almost life-sized figurative ceramic sculptures alongside ceramic plate works and photography. The abstract ceramic plates translate her urban photographs into tactile, three-dimensional surfaces, exploring the relationship between image and object, fragility and permanence. The addition of softly curved, human-shaped ceramic figures anchors the space with their meditative and grounded presence. These figurines create a dialogue between urban abstraction and tangible human experience, inviting reflection on how personal and collective stories intersect in shared environments.
With Bird, Plane, Butterfly, Nausikaä presents a holistic exploration of time, space, and being, balancing abstraction with intimacy.