Still My Eyes Water
Commissioned by the Taipei Biennial, the work presents a large bouquet of artificial flowers. Made of natural fabric, the flowers are based on the drawings from the book Flower of Palestine, first published in 1870 by Swiss missionary Hanna Zeller. In the book, Zeller makes 54 plates/drawings of the various types of wild flora in Palestine. Despite its missionary intention and colonial gaze, the work summons this book as a historical document that is activated today, in the face of erasure amidst the genocide and ecocide in Palestine. It holds in tension the land as a living site, celebrating its beautiful and abundant flora, and the land as a commemorative site, mourning a scorched terrain at risk of existing only in drawings, replicas, and memorials for soon-to-be extinct species.
