De la stanza degli uccelli de la Villa Medici aux Librairies for the Birds of… de Mark Dion : la volière comme bestiaire

Aviaries are not so much different from bestiaries as they are similar to them, if only by putting to the test the presuppositions of the identification of an imprisoned nature with the natural environment. A comparative analysis of the Villa Medici’s « stanza degli uccelli » and Mark Dion’s Libraries for the Birds of... shows how certain aviaries in art have been able both to embody a certain type of scientific apprehension of nature and to challenge, in action, the political, cultural or aesthetic presuppositions that presided over their construction, settlement and evolution. By displaying the artificial nature of the ‘nature’ they exhibit, artistic aviaries intentionally emphasise what historical and scientific aviaries reveal. They present dialectical relationships between order and disorder, artifice and nature, and the environment and its boundaries.