New Projects
"cactus, flowers, fuck-off, love, roses", multi-channel video installation
Site specific project
“Cactus, flowers, fuck-off, love, roses”, is a follow-up project to “Flower Girl”, which explored the transition from girlhood to women-hood, under a tide of confusing norms and expectations. This venture attempts to probe prevailing contradictions from a woman’s point of view. The title of the project comes from “tags” listed on the website Goodreads, for Jarod Kintz’s quote “Roses may say “I love you,” but the cactus says “Fuck off.”
As with “Flower Girl”, a key component of “cactus, flowers, fuck-off, love, roses” resides with the symbolic connection between flowers and women. The piece includes multiple videos of female (of various ages, body types and ethnicity) who respond to the symbolic meaning of the specific flower they have chosen. Each participant performs 2 distinct movements: one surrendering to her flower’s motif, and a second dance rejecting its claim. Each dancer owns the flower, becomes her, and choreographs repetitive gesture, while her legs remain immobile, like stems imbedded in soil.
The image above is a rendering of a proposed installation layout. Each video will layer time-lapsed footage of a flower blooming, and a female responding. Flowers in the piece will be chosen for their floriographic name, based on the Victorian Era practice of communicating through flowers.
Flowers have been a symbol for femininity and womanhood since ancient times, but the Victorians created an elaborate code and system for non-verbal communication. The nuances of the language are mostly forgotten, but the implications for women still linger – the perfect woman must still be pure (Lotus) of body, innocent (Daisy) in spirit, and a wildcat (Poppy) in bed.
Instillation vision: multiple vertical projections, presenting a field of women-flowers, endlessly submitting and rejecting cultural norms and expectations.