Between banality and significance, between sober acceptance and poetic condensation, Bay‘s ‚Poor little dead bird‘ investigates the layered terrain of childhood grief and the metamorphosis of emotional processing as one transitions into adulthood. The work unfolds from a precisely situated autobiographical fragment: a deceased canary, practically disposed of rather than ceremonially interred - a disparity that becomes the genesis for a multidimensional narrative.

The installation navigates the liminal space between material presence and the void of absence. The bird manifests as an ambiguous apparition within the exhibition space - simultaneously a concrete memory and an ephemeral spirit of bygone moments. In this suspended state of indeterminacy, it transforms into a vessel carrying multiple strata of meaning: emblematic of lost innocence, referential to neglected farewell rituals, embodying the tension between emotional depth and rational detachment. The work‘s title references a verse from the children‘s song of the same name.

Particularly revealing is the retrospective contemplation of one‘s emotional response - or its apparent absence - which illuminates the intricate topography of memory. The self-questining “Why didn‘t I care back then?” signals those shifts and reinterpretations that continuously reshape our relationship to lived experience. What once was passively accepted appears in hindsight as insufficiently mourned or processed. The work delves into the imaginative realms children construct to navigate existential disruptions - fabricated spaces where dignity and ritual are inherently extended even to the smallest beings. This juxtaposition of childlike and adult perceptual frameworks articulates a fundamental inquiry into the cost of maturation and what we relinquish when emotional resonance is sacrificed at the altar of pragmatic efficiency.​