A Line Made by Walking

by Sara Baume

Works about Flowers, I test myself: Anya Gallaccio, preserve ‘beauty’, 1991–2003. Two thousand red blooms pressed between glass panes, left to atrophy into brown pulp. They are gerbera–daisy hybrids; their heads are so classically floret-shaped. If somebody gave you a pencil and pad and asked you to draw a flower, you’d draw a gerbera–daisy hybrid without even knowing you had. I wouldn’t know either if it wasn’t for Anya Gallaccio; she chose them because they are biotechnologically mass-produced to meet the demands of the global market. So many people covet their cut stems, the Earth can’t keep up. Most of Gallaccio’s materials are perishable, her artworks concern mortality, inevitability, powerlessness. You can grow as many mutant flowers as you want, Gallaccio is saying. But you cannot stop a single one from dying.

That is bleak as hell