Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021
’Flowers in Art’ Arken Museum of Modern Art, DK, 2021
A ceramic vase in marbled ceramics decorated with engobe and engraved motifs. In the vase is a series of nineteen sequential bouquets of fresh flowers, one for each week of the exhibition. Each bouquet spells out a sentence in the language of flowers.
In the exhibition ’Flowers in Art’ at Arken, 4 September – 9 January 2022 an arrangement of living flowers adorns a vase. On the vase we see a series of engraved images. The pictures on the vase narrates the seventeenth-century tulip crisis,
generally regarded as history’s first financial bubble. The flowers in the vase tell their own story about the crisis through the flower language of the nineteenth century.
Here, each flower were ascribed a specific meaning and bouquets were used to transmit emotional messages that were too inappropriate to say aloud. Using this cryptological language known as the language of flowers, the artist has translated a text of nineteen sentences, into nineteen bouquets that replace one another, one for each week of the exhibition. The text of nineteen lines will slowly unfold during the course of the exhibition, into a story about the flower industry, consumer culture and the commodification of nature.
Supported by Statens Kunstfond, DK.
Flowers arranged in collaboration with Holly Flower Studio.
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Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (01) Boom to Bust, Commodity and Lust
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (02) In the first modern economy
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (03) Colonies and trade, a new kind of wealth
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (04) Renaissance explorers of botany
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (05) Collecting curiosities and wunders of the world
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (06) New luxury products
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (07) A new found obsession with tulip bulbs unfurled
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (08) Broken bulbs – multicoloured profit
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (09) November 1636 – bulbs dug in the ground
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (10) Hidden signal-less capital
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (11) Trade all night debauchery, prices that astound
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (12) Tulip futures – just scraps of paper
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (13) Everyone loves tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (14) Riches and status with tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (15) February – tulip sprouts pop with tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips, tulips
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (16) And here comes the trouble
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (17) Too many tulips to support the price
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (18) BOOM! Goes the bubble
Emilia Bergmark Narrative Container (Tulipomania), 2021 (19) Boom to bust, implosion of trust
