Flores Dormientes - New work by Zsa Zsa Hartmann Hughes

Flores Dormientes

New work by Zsa Zsa Hartmann Hughes
2nd-8th December 2013

My work is mainly based around painting and sculpture, collage and print media. I make paintings on board, canvas, paper and found objects. I am interested in sharing and giving also. Part of my exhibition will be giving away a small token of my work for free to anyone who wants a piece, thus encouraging a culture of reciprocity and giving. I will also be selling my work.

I am interested in the processes of life; from childhood all the way to old age. These stages in life affect our attitudes towards death and change. Many older people have come to terms with the process whilst young people believe themselves to be immortal. Fear of death and aging comes upon people in the middle ground. I intend to confront death and aging, making the audience re-consider it without the clamour of the industry of distraction and celebrity, thereby re-appropriating the power that our culture has over us and hopefully opening new discourse. My aim is to share my views of the passage of time in a way that celebrates the frailties of the human condition. I want to celebrate things that aren’t deemed to be desirable or attractive and bring forward their beauty.

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As death is the one common event every single human shares, our culture needs to open up to it more like those of the past and confront the inevitable deaths of those we love and even our own, something many people find repellent today. Our own deaths may be inconsequential to the existence of humanity but it will touch somebody. Our culture allows no space for death as we live in a world of continuous consumption and desire. Personal death has been placed behind a veil and had its context obscured creating the illusion that it is a rarefied and isolated event.

Our emotions have been confused by the overexposure to impersonal death in the media and while being simultaneously sheltered from it personally. We do not accept aging and decay as sign of a well lived life but rather try to hide the impact of the passage of time. The personal experience of death of someone close is difficult because nothing in our culture prepares us for it. Societal norms suggest that there is no such thing as death because anything can be replaced. Real, actual death is the last taboo of our culture.

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ENDS

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