Ingvild Hovland Kaldal

Correctly Named Securely Packed
2010

49 framed newspaper cut outs from the archive of Natural History Museum in Gothenburg.
The newspapers was used by the Finnish ethnologist Rafael Karsten to a protect his large collection of 272 hummingbirds when it was shipped from South America to Europe in the late 1920.
The newspapers were used to cover the long and tiny beaks of the small hummingbirds, and therefore they all have the same tube like shape and small size.
Except two ,all the newspaper cut outs comes from the British newspaper the TIMES. Some of them have a handwritten signature with a number, and the sex of the bird.

In 1916-1919 Rafael Karsten made ethnological studies of the Jivaro Indians in the amazonian region of eastern Ecuador. This group are most know for their ancient practice of head hunting and the practice of shrinking human heads (tsantsa). The story tells that Rafael Karsten hunted and killed the hummingbirds together with the Indians using a blow tube with poisoned darts.