Human Flower Project
Container-Gardening Art by MODA
MODA Botanica of Philadelphia has won the Best in Show award at this year’s Philadelphia International Flower Show. The designers set up six marvelous installations of floral scenes inside boxcar-like shipping containers. The contrast between grimy industrial exteriors, and lush, theatrically lit interiors was apt, considering this big old city has just been socked with another snowstorm. All of the scenes were knock-em-dizzy amazing. Plants floating, a shipment of all white flowers that had toppled in transit, an eerie spread of purple blooms spread over dining tables (or perhaps administering a mysterious treatment in a laboratory of entertaining).
There are plenty of artists who “deploy” flowers these days as a medium for ephemeral sculpture or conceptual statement. Having seen some such pieces (where the floral elements might as well have been paint or even plastic), we applaud all the more how these designers have rooted wit, conception, and aesthetics in understanding. Their installations are rich with perspectives on floral anatomy and commerce, as well as the human fantasies (a.k.a. customs) that put blooms to work.
See Virginia A. Smith’s extended report and an excellent slideshow from the Philadelphia Enquirer. And if you make the show, please let us know if the conceptualists of MODA flexed your neurons.
The Philadelphia International Flower Show runs February 28-March 7.
Visitors at the Philadelphia International Flower Show look into one of MODA Botanica’s shipping containers
Photo: Akira Suwa, for Philadelphia Enquirer