Florida: Feathered is the first instalment in Gaby’s ongoing bird study All My Friends Are Birds. The work reflects her sustained engagement with Florida’s landscapes, wildlife, and ecosystems through ceramic form, repetition, birdwatching, and direct observation.

What began as a plate depicting a state bird, became the origin point of the series. That first work established an inquiry into belonging, identity, freedom, and relationship to place. A gesture became study; an impulse, a meditation.

The series has since expanded into a body of twenty-one wall-mounted ceramic works each depicting a Florida bird, including pelicans, egrets, scrub jays, roseate spoonbills, anhinga, and other native and naturalized species. Together, the works form an evolving field of attention rather than a fixed set of portraits.

This installation is grounded in repetition, seriality, and birdwatching as a method of sustained observation, documentation and ultimately preservation. She paints from birds encountered in shared space and habitat, where looking becomes a form of attentiveness shaped by proximity and duration. The work emerges from lived observation as much as visual research, positioning artist and subject within overlapping environments.

The birds remain identifiable, preserving their distinct characteristics alongside a deliberately irreverent approach. Through this focus, the work reflects Viteri’s ongoing preoccupation with belonging, migration, identity, and the human relationship to place.

Over time, Viteri sustained a parallel practice reflecting a collision of obsession and responsibility, in which repetition operates as both method and structure.

Birds sing only when they feel safe. This principle underpins the series’ broader consideration of the conditions that allow life—human and more-than-human—to flourish, and frames the work’s attention to presence, vulnerability, and place.

All My Friends Are Birds will be exhibited Fall 2026 and is available for pre-order now.