Poetry of Birds: The Life of a Motif Across Literature, Image, and Jewelry

At the heart of the exhibition lies a fundamental question: how can an image remain alive across centuries?

The exhibition begins its answer with Attar’s Conference of the Birds. In this seminal work, birds are no longer merely creatures of nature; they become metaphors for search, knowledge, doubt, love, and transformation. Attar creates a world of images that extends far beyond literature—images that have been continuously reinterpreted and reimagined across different media and historical periods.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of Conference of the Birds was precisely this: transforming the bird from a natural creature into a cultural motif.

A motif that, once born in literature, acquired a life of its own.


Birds and jewelry displayed in front of the Persian carpet. Photo: L'ECOLE, School of Jewelry Arts/Benjamin Chelly.


The Persian miniatures featured in the exhibition, particularly those related to Conference of the Birds, reveal one of the earliest stages of this transformation. In these works, birds do more than illustrate a narrative; they become part of a broader visual language. The Simurgh, the hoopoe, the peacock, and countless other birds appear alongside gardens, flowers, trees, and architectural settings, forming a world in which image and meaning are inseparable.

Yet the significance of the exhibition lies not merely in the display of these works. One of its greatest strengths lies in its curatorial approach. Through the vision of curator Marie-Laure Cassius-Duranton, manuscripts, miniature paintings, jewelry, contemporary artworks, and heritage objects are brought into dialogue, revealing the trajectories through which this motif has travelled across centuries, media, and cultures.

Rather than presenting a linear historical narrative, the exhibition constructs a network of relationships. Manuscripts, European jewelry, contemporary artworks, Gulf heritage objects, and historical research are brought together to demonstrate how images move across time and between cultures.


Birds and jewelry displayed in front of the Persian carpet. Photo: L'ECOLE, School of Jewelry Arts/Benjamin Chelly.


In this reading, the bird is not a fixed subject but a migrating entity.
The migration of motifs is perhaps one of the least examined dimensions of art history. Unlike objects, which belong to specific places and periods, motifs are capable of travelling across centuries. They move from one medium to another, acquire new meanings within different cultural contexts, and transform without entirely losing their identity.

Poetry of Birds can be understood as an exploration of precisely this process.
Throughout the exhibition, birds appear in multiple forms: in poetry, image, ceramics, metalwork, enamel, and jewelry. The significance of their presence does not lie in the repetition of a fixed form. Rather, it resides in the motif’s extraordinary capacity for adaptation and reinvention.


Cartier: Peacock brooch, 1947. Private collection. Gold, platinum, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires. Photo: L'ECOLE, School of Jewelry Arts/Benjamin Chelly.


In some works, birds are represented with remarkable detail; in others, only a feather remains. At times, the vibrant colors of plumage become the central element, while elsewhere only movement, rhythm, or even the memory of a bird survives. These transformations suggest that what endures through time is not the bird’s physical form, but its ability to generate meaning within new contexts. Jewelry occupies a particularly important place within this narrative.

A substantial part of the exhibition is devoted to works in which the bird becomes a vehicle for formal, chromatic, and technical experimentation. Here, gemstones, enamel, precious metals, and sophisticated compositions are employed not simply to depict an animal. Rather, jewelers use the bird as an opportunity to explore color, texture, movement, and structure.
The exhibition demonstrates how a motif can acquire a new material language in every period.


Marchak: Bird brooch, Circa 1960. Gold, platinum, diamonds, rubies, emeralds. Private collection. Photo: L'ECOLE, School of Jewelry Arts/Benjamin Chelly.


The choice of materials is especially significant. Bahraini pearls, agarwood, coral, emeralds, onyx, malachite, and other materials featured in the works possess more than decorative value. Each carries traces of cultural memory. As a result, some of the pieces speak not only about birds, but also about trade, heritage, identity, and the cultural history of the Gulf region.

Color likewise plays a fundamental role.

Just as color in Persian miniature painting functions as more than a means of representing nature, color in many of the exhibition’s jewels becomes a tool for constructing a poetic world. Brilliant greens, saturated blues, vivid reds, and complex chromatic compositions owe less to natural observation than to a visual and cultural memory embedded within the motif itself.


Cartier: Duck brooch, 1968. Cartier Collection. Gold, tiger’s eye quartz, turquoise, and lacquer. Photo: L'ECOLE, School of Jewelry Arts/Benjamin Chelly.


From this perspective, the exhibition is not merely about birds. It is about the survival of images.
It asks how an image can emerge from a literary text written in twelfth-century Persia, enter the realm of painting, be reinterpreted through decorative arts and jewelry, and continue to resonate with contemporary audiences.

The birds of Attar were searching for the Simurgh. Yet the exhibition presents another journey altogether: the journey of the motif itself.
A journey that begins in Nishapur, passes through Herat, Tabriz, Isfahan, Istanbul, and Paris, and today finds itself gathered once again in Dubai.

Perhaps the exhibition’s greatest achievement lies in reminding us that images, much like people, migrate. They cross borders, transform, acquire new meanings within different cultures, and continually find new forms of life. And perhaps this is the true meaning of the poetry of birds: not flight through the sky, but the endless capacity of an image to continue its journey through history.


Birds and jewelry displayed in front of Persian tiles. Photo: L'ECOLE, School of Jewelry Arts/Benjamin Chelly.





Poetry of Birds exhibition display. Photo: L'ECOLE, School of Jewelry Arts/Benjamin Chelly.

 

About the author

Banafsheh Hemmati is a designer-artist based between Dubai and Tehran, working at the intersection of jewelry, sculpture, and site-specific installation. With a background in Industrial Design, she holds a PhD in Philosophy of Art, with a research focus on geometry and its philosophical transformation from Islamic to contemporary contexts. Her artistic practice explores the reinterpretation of Islamic geometric forms as a critical and conceptual visual language that bridges Eastern and Western aesthetics. Hemmati’s work is part of prestigious collections, including the DIFC Private Collection and the Carpet Museum of Iran. She is also a contributing writer at AJF Art Jewelry Forum.