The Birds Are Us: The Art of Flying When the Ground Shakes

What happens when the ground shakes?

The birds I paint are not just shapes on canvas. They are a metaphor for our own existence—the materialization of our capacity to ascend, whether creatively or in reality, at the very moment the stability we knew collapses.

In Beirut, I learned that resilience is not an act of rigidity. It is a movement. It is a flight.

This series is built from what remains. Over the strength of acrylic and the raw gesture of oil pastel, I incorporate the actual shards of the city: real feathers, collected one by one on the streets of Beirut. But that is not all. The textures I build layer upon layer are a silent dialogue with my heritage—echoing the indigenous peoples of Brazil, the discipline of Japanese traditions, and, as keen-eyed observers have pointed out, the rhythms of Arabic tapestry.

My canvas becomes a loom. On it, acrylic and oil pastel intertwine, and real feathers land like silent witnesses.

There is a beauty in what is imperfect, in what bears the marks of time and reconstruction. I do not seek the smoothness of perfection; I celebrate the irregularity of what has been hand-mended, like someone weaving a scar.

At some point, we are all the parents who guard empty nests—a mixture of longing and pride as we see our children, like my Aisha, seek new paths, new horizons, new healings. And we are, too, those same daughters, in constant search, breaking out of the cocoon to embrace the world. We are all together, apart.

This series, Birds of Beirut, is an open letter to this human condition. They were created from shards, but they do not carry the weight of destruction. They carry the lightness of our reconstruction. When I paint each wing and preserve each feather, I am painting my own journey—that of a Japanese-Brazilian woman who found here her place of nesting and, at the same time, of flight.

I invite you to look at these birds and ask yourself: how have I been flying when the ground shakes? Each piece in this series is an invitation for you to take a little of this lightness, this movement, and this hope into your own home.