Brilliant Absence: Pursuing the Kingfisher in the Work of Hans Waanders

On an October day in 1982 the Dutch artist Hans Waanders witnessed a kingfisher flying across a small pond near the river Maas. This singular moment prompted an extended quest for the elusive bird that persisted for the remaining nineteen years of his life. Waanders’ pursuit of the kingfisher became an expansive endeavour that both adopted and subverted methods of archiving, classification, mapping, and etymology. In a series of thematic essays, Ross Hair examines Waanders’ work in close detail—from the commonality of the kingfisher, to its broader context in art and literature, and the species’ associations with colour and reverie, and time and space.