White Bay Power Station
Strengthening Deaf Culture, 2023
tissue paper

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Courtesy the artists

Every year on a Guatemalan soccer field beside the local cemetery, each grave freshly swept and crowded with carefully arranged flowers, dawn breaks on more than 50 immense kites just moments from flight. Legend has it that 200 years ago the Guatemalan town of Sumpango was plagued by errant spirits. In desperation, the townspeople visited their local healer for counsel. His advice was that the sound of large paper kites (barriletes) slicing through the air would scare off any aggravated ghosts.

To this day, 1 November – All Saints’ Day – is marked by the annual Festival de Barriletes Gigantes, when immense kites are flown to honour the dead. Hand-made with a specially crafted bamboo frame, the vibrantly coloured kites take roughly 40 days to assemble. Depicting anything from religious iconography and economic struggles to specific family stories, the barriletes are closely tied to the Indigenous Mayan culture within Guatemala. Traditionally built and flown by men, the Orquídeas Barrileteras is the first female group of kite makers in Guatemala, established in the post-war period when the Mayan population was recovering from The Guatemalan Genocide during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996).

Each barrilete stays flying for only a short period of time before floating back to earth – no less beautiful, as with a life, for the brevity of its time in the sun.