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The Flower of Resistance. Kapwani Kiwanga's The Marias
01 November 2023, 5:30 pm–7:30 pm
Research seminar with Anita Hosseini.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Queenie Lee – History of Art
Location
-
IAS Forum, Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS)South WingWilkins BuildingLondonWC1E 6BT
During the 17th century, the French general Philippe de Longvilliers de Poincy is said to have discovered a shrub with bright yellow and orange flowers in Madagascar, which he took with him to the West Indies and to which he gave his own name: Poinciana pulcherrima. This delicate plant will become popularly known as the peacock flower, Pride of Barbados or fleur de paradis. It appears in Maria Sybilla Merian’s Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium in 1705, adorns the coat of arms of the island state of Barbados and eventually becomes the protagonist of Kapwani Kiwanga’s piece The Marias. In this lecture, I would like to trace the history of migration and the pharmacological use of the peacock flower, starting from The Marias. This flower becomes a symbol of female resistance against male oppression, but also of the struggle against slavery and colonialism.
Image: MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN - Peacock Flower with Carolina Sphinx Moth, Watercolour and bodycolour with gum arabic over lightly etched outlines on vellum, 38.5 x 27.7 cm, 1702-03.
About the Speaker
Anita Hosseini
Senior Scientist in the Department of Art History at University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Anita Hosseini is a senior scientist in the Department of Art History at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her research focuses on art historical, cross-epochal and interdisciplinary knowledge cultures and art theoretical issues. In her PhD thesis, she investigated the popularisation of knowledge in 18th century France with reference to the paintings of Jean Siméon Chardin. She is now working on a book project with the working title Rooted in Politics. Revisioning Imperial Botany through Contemporary Art. In it, she focuses on the colonial and imperial history of flowers, their symbolic charge, the knowledge associated with them and their role in making marginalised or overlooked histories visible.
More about Anita Hosseini