The Language of Flowers

Flowers are everywhere – we buy them for weddings, funerals, birthdays, and anniversaries.

We lay them on graves and decorate family tables. We wait for a flower from a loved one. We see them in paintings, postcards, and children’s drawings. We cultivate them in gardens.

Drawing from the Victorian, sentimental tradition of the language of flowers, the Japanese way of flowers – kado, and the Polish school of floristry, I want to use plants, fabrics, and other objects to express the feelings and states that touch me.
Sadness, anger, helplessness. Love, passion, contentment. Grief and loss. Inner chaos and moments of calm.

I arrange bouquets as gestures of gratitude and recognition for myself, and I honor my loved ones through them. I make them for my mother, who has been gone for many years. It is a visual threnody about our relationship.
I ask myself whether, today, the art of arranging flowers can still be a ritual.

And then I ask: where do flowers come from? Who grows them? And finally – do they feel anything? I look at flowers as objects, but also as subjects of my actions. I am intrigued by the role, meaning, and place of flowers in everyday life, culture, and art – from the most personal aspects to those concerning global issues.

If you would like to listen to me speak about this cycle, I invite you to two conversations:

“Flowers Suffocate on Air” – Fotopolis podcast
“Florist” – a program on Radio Kapitał

The outcome of this project is the photo book SIX VASES.

You can order it HERE.