Let This Be My Cathedral (2026) is an installation by Barbadian artist Annalee Davis, presented as part of In Minor Keys at the 61st International Biennale di Venezia in the Corderie, Arsenale. 

At the centre of the installation is a small, highly-detailed life-size lead cast of an Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis) — a migratory bird that once travelled in flocks so vast they were said to darken the skies of the Americas. Once one of the most abundant birds on the continent, the Eskimo Curlew was driven to the brink of extinction by large-scale commercial hunting in North America throughout the 19th century, its numbers collapsing with devastating speed as flocks were slaughtered during their seasonal migrations. The last confirmed sighting in Barbados — and what is presumed to have been among the last of the species anywhere — was mistakenly shot in September 1963 in a flock of Golden Plover.

Factum's Otto Lowe and Ferdinand Saumarez Smith produced a high-resolution photogrammetry recording of this stuffed bird at the Natural History Museum in Philadelphia. The resulting digital model was 3D printed and cast in lead. The process transformed the fragile specimen into a delicate and moving object — a material elegy for a vanished species.

3D model of the Eskimo Curlew © Factum Arte

The Eskimo Curlew, cast in lead © Oak Taylor-Smith | Factum Arte

The Eskimo Curlew, cast in lead © Oak Taylor-Smith | Factum Arte

The Eskimo Curlew, cast in lead © Oak Taylor-Smith | Factum Arte

For the floor of the installation a set of metal stencils were made from drawings of Palmetto Royale trees in from a 17th-century book about the island of Barbados. Damian Rojo travelled from Madrid to Venice to carry out the ‘branding’ process — burning these designs directly onto the floor of the exhibition space. The installation also features a number of cushions designed by Davis that are covered with a silk damask based on the Eskimo Curlew, and an herbarium of more than two hundred botanical elements.