This exhibition explores flowers as subversive symbols of sexuality

Flowers have long since existed in the cultural imagination as richly symbolic emblems, capable of evoking beauty, lust, innocence, seduction, nature, artifice, transcendence, danger, sexuality, love, death, and much more. The latest exhibition at Maison Guerlain in Paris embraces the wide range of contradictions and meanings flowers can embody. Taking its title from the feted book by Parisian poet and famed flâneur-about-town, Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal [The Flowers of Evil] is an intoxicating exploration of provocative ideas and, according to a statement by curator Hervé Mikaeloff, “the ties between nature and artistic creation”.

Amid the grandeur of Avenue des Champs Élysées, Maison Guerlain is the perfect home for such an exhibition. As the flagship store of one of the oldest and most illustrious perfume houses in Paris [and therefore the world], the exhibition is ineluctably infused with floral fragrances, adding an extra sensory dimension to the experience. Featuring artworks by 26 international artists [a dozen of which were commissioned specially for this event], the exhibition includes work by the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe, Nobuyoshi Araki, Alvaro Barrington and Anselm Kiefer, alongside emerging artists such as Mykola Tolmachev, Thandiwe Muriu and Lise Stoufflet.

While artists such as Araki and Mapplethorpe are known for their often abstracted, always erotic photographs of flowers – amplifying the obscene gorgeousness of their stamens and pollen and the luscious folds of their petals – Roni Landa’s anthropomorphic sculptures take the connection of flowers and bodies a step further. Made from a fleshy polymer clay that begs to be touched, the petals of “Rose Labia” [2023] meet in an unmistakably suggestive configuration, implying the presence of a hidden, moist interior. At the centre of Landa’s second flower – “Flora Erecta” [2023] is a smooth protuberance emitting a single pearl of liquid.

Mimosa Echard explores the tactility of the natural world in “Bisoufleur” [2019], a photograph of an open mouth meeting an orchid – either to lick the flower or to consume it whole. The image is overlaid with layers of latex and glue, creating a dripping, textured surface. Toying with the orchid’s associations with sensuality and the commodification of nature, Echard’s image invites us to think about desire and consumption.

Painter Alina Bliumis elaborates on the long-established relationship between flowers and women’s bodies in a series of works that speaks to ideas of autonomy and subjugation. Plant Parenthood [2022] is a series of paintings made in response to the devastating changes in abortion legislation in the US, decrying the control and restrictions such laws impose on women. 

Meanwhile, Oda Jaune’s surreal, disconcerting painting “Fleurs” [2015] presents a grotesque bouquet of what at first glance looks like flowers and, on closer inspection, seems more like an artful Francis Bacon-esque arrangement of offal and organs. Continuing the theme of decay, ​​Yan Pei-Ming’s “Les Roses bleues du mal” [2023] presents a garland of what could be roses encircling a receding skull, created in hues of blue impasto oil paint.

Bringing the themes of the exhibition full circle, Jean-Philippe Delhomme’s “Roses et Matisse, ‘Les fleurs du mal’” [2023] is a more tranquil, traditional still life depicting a serene scene of a vase of roses beside an open book on a white-clothed table. Taken from his series Flowers for Books, Delhomme invites us to ponder the passage of time and ephemeral beauty. As the text accompanying the exhibition asks, “Might flowers, which are short-lived, be like an offering made to books – symbols of enduring knowledge? Or is it a declaration of the superiority of flowers in full bloom over the unchanging nature of books? Flowers wilt and books remain.”

For a closer look at some of the artworks on display in the exhibition visit the gallery above.

Les Fleurs du Mal is running at Maison Guerlain, Paris, until November 13, 2023.

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