"Planetary Composition from Flowers" (2023)
Installation with printed tiles and live flowers
The starting point of this work was a photo taken at the beginning of the seventies depicting the artist's father Jenő Németh and an accompanying delegation as they arrived at the opening of the flower exhibition Flóra Bratislava. The photograph and the situation itself showcase the arrangement of strict geometric rules and centralized systems (the leader and his “entourage”). This 1972 exhibition represented to the artist the socialist illusion that cosmic space and nature could be explored and mastered by humanity.
The historic photograph from that exhibition is accompanied with live flower bouquets and tiles of photo fragments depicting a rose farm belonging to the artist's friend in Ethiopia. In Ilona's words: “Lemlem Sissay and I were brought together in the early 1980s by socialist internationalism. There were very few countries in which Ethiopian and Czechoslovakian students could study abroad, but Hungary was one such country for both of us. We met in the late 1980s before she finally went back to Ethiopia. We met again in 2011 when I learned that after her first husband died she had established and was running a successful rose farm near Addis Ababa.”
By referencing Flóra Bratislava and its use of roses grown in Africa, the artwork reflects on the sudden connection formed between distant regions.
/ Photo credit: Kristīne Madjare / Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art