Who has the right to claim a flower?
“Still Life with Flowers, 2024” is a participatory performance that invites the audience to co-create a flower composition as an exercise in privilege. The performance suggests that the focus on flowers in various art forms is a testament to power and presents moments when a claim on flowers challenges who is entitled to centre flowers in their art and in what way.
Olga Spyropoulou (FI)
In “Still Life with Flowers, 2024”, the discussion about flowers is a discussion about how one is expected to perform in a system of power.
The performance’s argument is illustrated with several references: a 1890’s review of the Cercle des femmes peintres’ exhibition, published in La Jeune Belgique, whose author claims that “as long as women stick to an art similar to that of embroidery, it is exquisite, otherwise they lack the gift of composition”, poems such as Noor Hindi’s Fuck Your Lecture On Craft, My People Are Dying that begins with the line “Colonizers write about flowers” and Hanif Abdurraqib’s How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, and performances such as Anne Imhof’s Sex at Tate Modern (2019) where burning flowers were offered to the audience members, and Khadija Baker’s Performing Community Garden (2021), in which various potted plants were named after people who died or were displaced as a result of violence in their communities.
Olga Spyropoulou’s artistic media are performance art and poetry. Born in Athens and based in Helsinki, she is interested in how we relate to one another and experiments with various modalities of spect-actorship and non-hierarchical methodologies. Commitment, trust, and accountability are crucial elements in her performance practice.
Infos
| DATE | CONTENU |
|---|---|
| 2024/04/261900 |
26.04.2024 19:00 > 19:45 Studio Thor, Brussels Réservations |
Participative performance
Content note: the performance addresses systemic inequalities and the violence they might produce always in relation to flowers.
In the framework of “Time For Live Art”. Project co-funded by the European Union (Creative Europe programme).
