Mascarene Flamingo (Leather Sculpture)

Ships from Japan.
The Mascarene flamingo is a bird known only from early colonial accounts in the Indian Ocean’s Mascarene Islands. No fossil evidence confirms its existence, and it remains a hypothetical species—somewhere between record and speculation.
 
In this sculpture, Haruka Miyamoto gives form to this uncertain bird through a precise and layered construction using hand-cut leather, fabric, and wire. Each feather is individually shaped and applied, creating a dense surface that shifts from smooth, scale-like layering along the neck and chest to finer, shredded textures at the back and sides. The materials are chosen and handled to reflect differences in weight, density, and movement across the bird’s body.
 
Miyamoto’s technique centers on the expressive use of leather—not just as covering, but as a structural and sculptural material. By adapting traditional craft processes to animal form, she creates works that are at once imaginative and grounded in physical detail. Her ongoing focus on extinct or undocumented species is less about re-creation than it is about proposing new ways of seeing—through material, memory, and form.