“I have gathered a garland of other men’s flowers, and nothing is mine but the cord that binds
them.” Michel de Montaigne
Flowers symbolise the opposite of force. Flower power was, in the 1960s, a rejoinder to killing fields. A
flower placed in the barrel of a gun renders the weapon benign. Blooms are the opposite of crises.
The slow motion film of an opening bud conveys growth, hope, optimism. And yet we have
somehow managed to sully flowers. The first crisis of financialisation is remembered at the tulip crisis.
The Great War is symbolised on 11th November every years with red poppies whose beauty refers to
carnage.
With this work Danae Stratou offers a floral allegory for North-South divide in this era of Europe’s
deconstruction following the eurozone’s crisis. If flower power cannot heal the rifts, what can?
