Men in cages, perched like birds. The cage, a symbol of confinement and oppression, the bird, a symbol of freedom and the desire to be free. The man in the cage, naked, awkwardly posed, sketchily constructed, conveying the fragility and vulnerability of the human spirit, trapped and confined, yet on permanent display. Marcus Aurelius wrote, that 'our life is what our thoughts make it'. The cage could represent the psychological cage in which many of us imprison ourselves, built from guilt, expectation, anxiety and everything else. The figure inside is our psyche, it's song the optimistic note. The installation includes the sound of free songbirds in the woods. In her autobiography of 1969- Maya Angelou uses the title -' I know why the caged bird sings' - to demonstrate the incredible human ability to grow and flourish, sometimes even in terrible conditions which included racism and childhood rape. The outrage that I felt every morning in our last house, when I used to hear the neighbour's wild song birds in tiny cages singing every morning, was a potent reason for moving. I scrawled lines from Giovanni Verga down the side of the house, 'Storia di una capinera', about a young woman forced into a convent who stares out of the window as she descends into madness, deprived of freedom. "Pensare che avrebbe potuto bastarmi quest'angolo di terra, uno spicchio di cielo, un vaso di fiori, per godere tutte le felicità del mondo, se non avessi provato la libertà e se non mi sentissi in cuore la febbre roditrice di tutte le gioe che son fuori queste mura!". Maybe a bit mad myself, and certainly very oppressive for the neighbour.