This group exhibition first took place in 2024 across three locations in Tirana, Albania. Its starting point is a socialist realist painting by Albanian artist Agron Dine, who painted it over 40 years ago. It shows young people cheerfully tending flowers in a public park. Factory chimneys smoke in the background. The economy and industry are flourishing, but so is the surrounding natural world.
The exhibition looks at the globalised (art) world through the motif of the flower. Flowers have always borne a wide range of social projections: they must beautify, conceal, convey messages, initiate relationships, or even end them. In the process, flowers themselves are colonised, shipped around the world, and abused.
A look at different art systems and their working conditions shows the extent to which our environment is determined by capitalist systems of order. Who can afford to look after flowers at all? Or, alluding to the exhibition title, to count their petals?
Artists: Abi Shehu, Agron Dine, Alfred Lenz, Fatlum Doçi, Lumturi Blloshmi, Marianne Lang, Remijon Pronja, Rosella Pelliccioti (Was bleibt kollektiv / Gentian Doda), Ryts Monet, Susanna Hofer, zweintopf
Supported by the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs and the Province of Styria, Department 9, Culture, Europe, Sport.
