Cassi Namoda in Flight Paths
30 March—4 July 2026
Group exhibition at American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy
Flight Paths transforms the story of Rome's beloved (and much maligned) parakeets into an exploration of urban environments, planetary ecology, and the entangled histories connecting humans, birds, and cities across millennia.
In 1999, more than one thousand parakeets arrived at Fiumicino Airport in large cages. Faced with this unexpected cargo, authorities released the birds into the open air. Today, rose-ringed parakeets (Psittacula krameri) and monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) have become an integral part of Rome's identity, filling the city's parks with their presence while raising urgent questions about adaptation, ecology, and coexistence.
Flight Paths reveals that these so-called "alien" or "invasive" species have a far more complex relationship with the Mediterranean world than contemporary labels suggest. Exotic birds circulated in antiquity as symbols of power, empire, and global trade, connecting Ancient Rome to Afro-Asian geographies. By tracing these entangled histories, the exhibition positions birds as vital indicators of urbanism, adaptation, and environmental change—demonstrating that the life of a city can literally be read from a bird's-eye view.
Flight Paths bridges into the contemporary with an exceptional roster of international artists and architects including Allora & Calzadilla, Alvin Curran, Craig Douglas (AAR Affiliated Artist 2023), Chioma Ebinama, Studio Gang (AAR Resident 2017), Heather Hart (AAR Fellow 2026), Joan Jonas, Ana Mendieta (AAR Fellow 1983), Cassi Namoda, Laura Owens, STIMSON (AAR Fellow 2024), Anika Roach, Raqs Media Collective, Roberto Zhao Renhui, alongside a dynamic younger generation of Italian artists—Catherine Biocca, Michela De Mattei, Michele Gabriele, Sara Ravelli, and Giorgio Orbi, 16th century author François Le Gouz de La Boullaye and the unknown authors from the archaeological collections of the American Academy in Rome and the National Roman Museum. They each use birds as powerful indicators of ecological and political disruption across diverse geographies spanning North America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia, engaging contested concepts of population, migration, and extinction.