Parrot, Oil on canvas, 2018.

Walter Benjamin used photographs as a tool to project life into the future. Photographs for him where images of future corpses. Jacques Barraband’s paintings of parrots, however corpse like, are in contrast, they are images of past lives once lived. His paintings and drawings of (neo)tropical birds are surfaces containing lived experience. Praised for their lifelike qualities Barraband produced all of his work by drawing (copying, parroting) from taxidermy specimen.