The flower shop consists of a “flower arrangement”, (mixed media on cotton paper), displayed in a custom-made acrylic frame (aka vase), bespoke wallpapers and objects (aka pollinators).  Two designs of wallpaper are part of the work, one is designed based in the “Toile the Joule” using photographs I took during the 2020 lockdown, where the traffic and pollution was reduced to a minimum, and the city was taken over by pedestrians and by families and children on their bicycles, allowing the rebirth of nature. The Toile the Joule is a traditional design usually depicting mostly pastoral scenes. Instead of the countryside, I am using the cities without traffic images (that have been taken over by transportation since the invention of the automobile) to illustrate that, with the polluters gone, they are once again a space for people to enjoy and nature to rebirth. A second motif, displays the Pollinators in full action, helping spread the seeds of life to create more beauty. As everything, they are colorful cheerful, and threatening and dangerous, as for most things, nothing is totally good or totally bad (not considering extremes).

 

The flowers are a body of work I started during the first lockdown in 2020. At the time I was living in London, an overly centralized, polluted, and crowded city, yet also very beautiful full of history and events. As I lived in the center, I witnessed the change the city went through during the lockdown. We biked around the city, without traffic, families with their children were enjoying a place that once before was owned by the car and the public transport.

The view of the buildings was magnificent, the lack of advertising and other polluters allowed the very few of us to witness her beauty.

 

It has been difficult, ups and downs. But there was also the good side, the dolphins swimming back into the Venice canals, the pollution levels decreasing, and the smells of the flowers becoming more prominent.  The office workers managed to work from home, all those hours wasted transporting in overly crowded public transport were put to a better use. Several left the big cities to settle in smaller towns and bigger houses with green areas, fomenting decentralization, and growth in other forgotten towns, where due to the small population, not many were able to start a business there, a restaurant, a convenience store, a theater, or an art gallery or whatever you have in mind…

 

The flower shop wants to create a space that allows you to revisit the speed of time we were living before, the frenetic hysteria, the disparity and disproportionality in the way our resources were divided, priority and admirations, trust, and true needs, and most of all, to have a beautiful flower arrangement lasting (almost) forever.