Flower Girl
2008
8 Hours of Deconstructing Collected Silk Flowers
ACA Gallery, Atlanta, GA
“One day, my colleague took me to one of the largest cemeteries in Georgia where an endless array of cemetery flowers was inserted into the green lawn so precisely. He wanted to show me his grandfather’s grave. My obsession with cemetery flowers started on that first day of visiting the cemetery. After getting permission from the cemetery office, I started my regular visits to the cemetery to collect loads of discarded cemetery flowers into my car. The distinctive colors and smell of the cemetery flowers started to fill up my studio.
People started to identify me as the ‘flower girl.’ I started to cover the metallic sculpture studio with fabric cemetery flowers; I would sit for hours taking the flowers apart and re-arranging each item. Not only did the cemetery flowers perfectly symbolize the commemoration of loss and ephemeral beauty, but also they were malleable in my explorative installation, material studies, and performances. It made perfect sense to me…
…After a few experimental performances came the process of ‘deconstructing’ the cemetery flowers I had gathered. Studying the physiology of artificial flowers led to compartmentalizing each piece of the carefully constructed flower into categories - petals, leaves, stems, and inner parts. This menial activity of deconstructing and itemizing would last for hours, and I would find myself stationed on the floor, unmoved and consumed by the act of converting these cemetery flowers into some other form. Intensity of focus on the process disengaged me from reality. My awareness of my surroundings was less alert and keen. During this time consuming process, I transformed selective collections of found objects such as cemetery flowers and garments into a residuum of the past and the present. In this performance, an interpretation of dissociative behaviors hints at the subconscious mind’s attempt to recreate and relive in an altered history.”
-An excerpt from Hur’s thesis “A Requiem in the Garden”