Elodie Hoodies
Description: In Berlin, my Bird of Peace takes the form of a dovecote of memory and reconciliation. Two open hands, side by side, turned downward, become a shelter for the birds. Inside, pigeons rest, visible through the openings of the monument, like a breath within history. The base is a pierced wall, inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. At that time I was 14 years old, and had the chance to live this historical moment.. As a child I still remember that immense turning point: a wall coming down, borders opening, families reuniting, and that rare feeling that freedom could truly change the world. Above the two intertwined doves, a metal sign carries these words in German: “Denk immer daran”( “Always remember.” ).
Description: Inspired by the London Underground network, the golden lines crossing the structure evoke both circulation and refuge. During World War II, Underground stations became shelters for civilians during the Blitz. In the monument, these lines symbolize connection, resilience, movement, and protection, transforming the dovecote into both a sanctuary for the bird of peace, the pigeon, and a memory space for human coexistence. For many years, the pigeons of Trafalgar Square were part of London’s identity, fed, photographed, celebrated, and deeply woven into the memory of the city. Later, they became rejected, increasingly treated as unwanted. This project imagines the return of a peaceful coexistence with respect and care .
Description: This project began almost intuitively. At first, I was simply drawing two hands floating through a city at night. A dark vision surrounded by water and inhabited by birds. Slowly, these hands transformed into dovecotes, shelters integrated into the urban landscape, inhabited by birds of peace. For a long time, I have been reflecting on the way pigeons coexist with us in cities. They live among us, on our buildings, within our ruins, in forgotten spaces, yet they are often ignored or rejected. Imagining dovecotes integrated into the city is also a way of imagining a different relationship between humans, animals, and architecture, a more peaceful coexistence.
Description: « Hiroshima Dove Cote for Peace” is conceived as a monument of coexistence between humans and pigeons as urban birds. The sculpture combines shelter, memory, and peace through the image of a resting dove held within two open hands. The architecture below is not a reconstruction of the destroyed Hiroshima Dome, but rather a distant architectural echo, a remembrance of history transformed into a place of refuge and life. The niches integrated into the structure function as dove cotes, offering shelter to birds within the monument itself. The hands are inspired by folded forms that subtly recall Japanese origami without becoming literal origami sculptures. Their faceted geometry suggests fragility, care, and reconstruction.
Description: The “miscellaneous” street pigeon is not just some random city bird. It is one of humanity’s oldest companions. 🕊️ For thousands of years, we selectively bred pigeons to serve us. We shaped their instincts, bred the wild out of them, and made them trust us completely. They carried our messages across continents and battlefields, saved lives during wars, supported agriculture, and became humanity’s very first form of “instant messaging.” We did not build our civilizations alone. In many ways, pigeons built them with us. The birds people now dismiss as “rats with wings” are the descendants of animals we once celebrated, relied on, and depended upon.
Description: For this Dovecote for Peace dedicated to Istanbul, I was inspired by a long-standing, living relationship between the city and the animals that share its space. In Turkey, traditional pigeon houses reflect an ancient form of coexistence between humans and pigeons. These structures speak of care, presence, and continuity, of a time when animals were not separated from the fabric of architecture and daily life. I was also inspired by the Pigeon Valley in Cappadocia, where thousands of small openings carved into the rock once offered shelter to pigeons, creating a landscape shaped by mutual presence and use.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Dovecote for Peace is inspired by the Sebilj Fountain, one of the city’s most emblematic public spaces, where pigeons gather, drink, and move freely around water. It is a place of quiet coexistence between architecture, nature, and daily life. For the base, I was inspired by this fountain, a point of gathering and return, where pigeons are not separate from the city but fully part of it. The sculpture’s foundation becomes a large hand, offering and supporting, echoing the gesture of drinking from water. It sits between giving and receiving, care and dependence, peaceful coexistence, human presence and fragile life.
Description: ''Harley was born into the Haarlemersluis Amsterdam (Netherlands) inner city flock, where extreme stringfoot is the norm. Pigeons get this horrible condition from walking constantly on the streets for food, wherever there are lots of people and human garbage. When pigeons receive a steady and appropriate food source then the incidence of stringfoot is very much reduced. Within every struggling, bedraggled city pigeon is a gorgeous bird with a unique character & personality, if he or she could be allowed to exist beyond desperate survival mode. Feral pigeons are estray domesticated birds, not wild animals, and they deserve food, shelter and, when needed, medical attention in city council lofts.''
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: ''New York Dovecote For Peace, A Home For the Birds, A message To Humans'' This work proposes a sculptural infrastructure for the pigeons where gesture becomes architecture. A single outstretched hand, constructed from brick and exposed industrial metal, forms the core of the piece. Its material language is deliberately raw: bolts, joints, and structural elements remain visible, reflecting the constant construction and resilience of New York City itself. Embedded within this hand is a network of nesting cavities designed for the birds of peace, urban pigeons. These spaces are not added as intervention, but integrated as function, a monumental dovecote allowing movement, habitation, safety, and return.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: The monument itself is built on two large columns, almost like legs, carrying the bird upward. It is standing 15 meters high, alike the other city dovecotes to come. On their surface, I integrated the patterns of the Warsaw mermaid, the city’s emblem, as a way to anchor the work in its identity, its protection, its resilience. At the base, I also included the symbol of the Warsaw Uprising. I felt it was essential. I saw it everywhere when I was in the city, and it stays deeply present in the collective memory. Even in a work dedicated to peace, to coexistence, to pigeons inhabiting the city, I wanted this layer of history to remain visible. Because Warsaw is not only a city of reconstruction, it is a city that remembers.
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young,
Description: This pigeon, symbol of peace, of faith, of message, has been carried, invoked, believed in. Raised as a sign, lowered as an offering. Around it, hands gather. They reach, they hold, they frame… but their intention remains uncertain. Are they protecting, healing, guiding? Or are they claiming, praying, sacrificing? Between devotion and possession, the gesture trembles. For centuries, pigeons have been used to carry meaning heavier than their wings, as messengers, as omens, as living answers to questions that perhaps never had any. And still, we continue to believe. To project. To ask them to hold what we cannot resolve ourselves. “What about me?”, asks the White Dove....
Description: This artwork is part of an ongoing series dedicated to raising awareness about stringfoot pigeons. Stringfoot is a preventable condition caused when discarded human-made fibers, such as hair, thread, fishing line, or plastic string, become tightly wrapped around a pigeon’s feet. As circulation is cut off, the fibers can cause severe pain, deformities, loss of toes, chronic infections, and permanent disability. Rather than defining these birds by their injuries, this series seeks to restore their dignity. Pigeons living with stringfoot are often overlooked or perceived as “ugly,” yet they are among the most resilient of urban wildlife. Despite enduring constant pain and hardship, they continue to fly, forage, care for their mates and young.
Description: The bird of peace doesn’t look at both. She hopes and turns toward the hand that might offer, even when nothing is certain. Even when there may be nothing to receive. Because something in her still trusts. But in the streets, we don’t see Peace. We see a Pigeon. Too close. Too ordinary. Too many. A nuisance. We push her away. The same wings we praise as a symbol becomes something we refuse to touch. Hands that give. Hands that take. And somewhere in between, peace is left to survive on what we choose to offer.
Description: ''My very first pigeon was found by me by the residential building in the early morning of June 25, 2018. She was about 15 days old, a baby dinosaur who touched my heart at first sight. She became my inseparable beloved feathered friend and she lives with me at home with my other pigeons.''(Sveta, Dnipro, Ukraine)
Description: ''I had an intensely close bond with Fyodor since the moment we met, when he was so overwhelmed that I had put out such a gigantic spread of healthy bird snacks, that he flew up and hung in the air hovering in front of my face, then went back to the ground only to fly up again and hang in the air in front of my face again, and back down again. He did this four times in a row and then landed on my shoulder. We became inseparable from that moment on. He was the very first feral Rock dove to ever land on me or jump in my arms when he had just freshly fledged about a week or two prior. He was insanely jealous, and we also had a special telepathic communication. I miss him everyday.'' (Harvard University, Cambridge)
Description: ''We saw the post in Palomacy’s Facebook page that a grounded pigeon had been found, and the rescuer didn’t know what to do. After seeing the pain in his eyes on a picture, Memo decided to drive 7 hours to pick that handsome up. From the moment he arrived he never once lost his dignity despite the agonizing pain and loss he suffered keeping his head up and eyes piercing through us almost trying to teach an important lesson with his humble acceptance of a new reality… He’s acted as if he’s lived in here with us all his life, at times making us feel like visitors him being the owner. Nowadays, he is discovering new things about living with us. He must be feeling good though as he started calling for a female already. We love him.''
Description: This is Ollie. Ollie is disabled and was hatched this way. Ollie cannot stand still, nor walk like a typical pigeon, or fly BUT since his young age he has been developing his incredible resilience and strong willed temper, this little bird had absolutely the will to live and energy to move mountains. Ollie is total pure cuteness, he captures the heart of humans who have the chance to get to know him. Ollie loves to cuddle, and is also very playful. He is deeply loved by his human mother Adrienne who is wonderfully taking care of him. We love Ollie!!! Location: Bay Area of California, USA
Description: '' I went to the local park to feed some Pigeons but before I even got out of my car I spotted a lone bird in the middle of the road looking lost. She was in danger of getting hit by a car and I quickly realized it was a racing pigeon that had either gotten lost on its way home or had been dumped. After following her for some time me and my boyfriend were able to grab her and put her in a box and take her home. She was very fearful at first but after living in my room with me for 3 months she has blossomed into a smart, curious, and gorgeous bird. Although Plum still won’t let me hold her, I know that our bond will only strengthen with time. '' Plum lives with her human parents in Reno, Nevada.
Description: ''My girlfriend Jacque and I adopted a baby pigeon who was rescued by our building’s maintenance crew. They had attempted to care for the baby pigeon in the basement parking garage, a place too dark and hot for any creature to survive long-term. The crew, knowing we were doing a documentary about pigeons, invited us to see the baby. We brought her up to our apartment where she could live in a comfortable tent on our patio near other wild pigeons. Fast forward a few months, and this baby pigeon, whom we named Franklin after the maintenance man who gave her to us, made her way into our hearts and home. She is part of our family and we’ve adopted another pigeon named Dandelion to be a friend for her.'' (Location: Manhattan, NYC)
Description: ''Urban environments often lack sufficient natural food sources for pigeons and other birds, forcing them to scavenge unhealthy scraps left by humans, which harm their health. Providing quality seeds every two/three days ensures that pigeons receive some proper nutrition. Pigeons contribute to the urban eco system by dispersing seeds and cleaning up organic matter. Healthy pigeon populations can maintain ecological balance. Cities are shared spaces for both humans and animals, providing food and dovecotes fosters a more humane and respectful relationship between people and pigeons.''
Description: In late 2024 both Avian Underdogs and Moose’s Flock were notified of a case of 130 pigeons left without care after their owner passed away. They were being watched over in place by LA Animal Services, but if they were to go to a shelter they would be euthanized immediately due to lack of space. The aviary was far from predator proof and at least 50 were killed before a rescue could be coordinated. 73 birds is a massive amount for small rescues to intake, but the Rescues couldn’t stand to see them euthanized. Some passed away after rescue, but many are recovering well and looking for their forever homes. Wearing this apparel is not only a testimony against the cruelty of pigeon racing but also generates donations for the rescues involved.
Description: ''Pidge was covered in some kind of chemical that smelt like petrol, he had really bad cankers, string foot and mites. I bathed him twice at day, cleaned up his feet, treated him for parasites and cankers. For the first week I wasn’t sure if he’d make it but he got a little stronger each day. He lived with me for around a month. Towards the last week with me he’d spend a couple hours each night cooing for his mate. He was a sassy boy who wasn’t afraid to wing slap but we formed a sweet bond during his time with me. '' Pidge was rescued by Lee who lives in Southampton, UK.
Description: Ollie is disabled and was hatched this way. Ollie cannot stand still, nor walk like a typical pigeon, or fly BUT since his young age he has been developing his incredible resilience and strong willed temper, this little bird had absolutely the will to live and energy to move mountains. Ollie is total pure cuteness, he captures the heart of humans who have the chance to get to know him. Ollie loves to cuddle, and is also very playful. He is deeply loved by his human mother Adrienne who is wonderfully taking care of him. We love Ollie!!! Location: Bay Area of California, USA
Description: ''I had an intensely close bond with Fyodor since the moment we met, when he was so overwhelmed that I had put out such a gigantic spread of healthy bird snacks, that he flew up and hung in the air hovering in front of my face, then went back to the ground only to fly up again and hang in the air in front of my face again, and back down again. He did this four times in a row and then landed on my shoulder. We became inseparable from that moment on. He was the very first feral Rock dove to ever land on me or jump in my arms when he had just freshly fledged about a week or two prior. He was insanely jealous, and we also had a special telepathic communication. I miss him everyday.'' (Harvard University, Cambridge)
Description: ''Stevie is a strong-willed, loving soul. She bonded to me quickly. When I returned to work, I adopted Cher and Bruce so she would have company while I was out of the house, but she remains my "ride or die". I struggle with chronic illness and she is always by my side at my worst moments. When she is not sitting on the nest she loves to cuddle with me, keep me company, taste all the foods I'm eating, and hop around the apartment foraging for seeds or whatever else she finds. She even prefers to sleep in my room, sometimes on my bed, and have snuggles in the morning when we wake up. I'm so grateful for her'' (Sidney, NYC)
