X-Birds

Artist Ho Tam made X-Birds in 2022. It is an inkjet print on paper, measuring 33 centimetres wide by 
48 centimeters high. For the story that accompanies this artwork, Ho Tam created the X-Birds, superhero birds 
sent to save the world from global warming. But they are working overtime and need more super-talented recruits.

This artwork is a horizontal collage of 5 birds of different sizes and species flying high over the Great Wall of China.
The entire frame is filled by a bird’s eye view of a landscape of low, steep mountains. They crowd together like waves 
on water. The landscape is printed in red. Winding along the top of the ridges is a tall, broad stone wall, with a sunken 
roadway on top. Every so often, there are small square towers like tiny castles standing across the wall. 

The viewer looks down onto the wall. A section of it fills the bottom left of the frame, dwindling to a thread along the distant 
twisting ridges to the right. Another, distant section of the wall is visible along the left edge of the print, disappearing out of the frame. 
The two sections appear to connect somewhere behind the viewer. Five birds are flying across the image from right to left at the 
eye-level of the viewer. They are arranged diagonally from bottom right to top left. They appear to be flying in formation, creating 
the sense that they belong to a team with a purpose. The birds are a mixture of colours, sizes and species from various parts of the world:
 a dove, a goose, an ibis, an eagle and a hummingbird. The right-most bird is the closest to the viewer, therefore the biggest. It is a 
dove carrying a twig of laurel leaves in its beak. 

Ho Tam has taken the birds from their original bank notes and given them new symbolic roles in his own story. The meaning of 
a symbol depends on where it appears and who chose it. Who chose the images on the banknotes that you use, and why? 
Do they mean something different to you?