60 / 50 cm

Acrylic, fluorescent acrylic, luminescent acrylic 

In this work, Valera appears in an unsettlingly domestic scene: a pigeon sits on a toilet, suspended between absurdity and an almost uncomfortable familiarity. He is not directly anthropomorphized, yet the context invites a human reading — an intimate interior where the bird sits with a cigarette and reads a book titled “People-Rats.”

The book itself becomes a visual statement. Its cover accumulates symbols of ecological collapse: plastic straws, disposable cups, a plastic bottle, and a felled tree. These objects are not decorative — they function as a quiet but consistent inventory of evidence, pointing to what is usually erased by the routines of consumption.

The work constructs an ironic reversal of the label often assigned to pigeons — “rats of the sky.” Here, that accusation is turned back toward its origin. The question shifts: who is actually the “rat” in the urban ecosystem? The pigeon, surviving on the margins of human infrastructure, or the human whose impact reshapes entire environments?

Within this tension between humor and discomfort, Valera becomes both witness and reader, calmly absorbing a narrative that redefines moral roles. The bathroom setting intensifies the intimacy of the scene, dissolving boundaries between the natural and the constructed, the animal and cultural critique.

Valera is a Rat ultimately speaks less about the pigeon and more about projection — and the uneasy mirror it holds up to human language, behavior, and ecological responsibility.

The painting is presented in a heavily textured frame, hand-finished with decorative plaster. An integrated ultraviolet light system is built directly into the frame, activating three different types of paint layered throughout the work. Depending on the lighting conditions — daylight, ultraviolet light, or darkness — the painting reveals three separate visual states, transforming the image into a shifting, multi-layered environment rather than a fixed surface.

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