Flower Drop
A performance by Molly Haslund, curated for CHART art fair 2023
Flower Drop is a performance by Molly Haslund that she first showed in June 2021 during the Den Frie Morgen (the Free Morning).
Molly Haslund (b. 1976) works across media and strategies. From performance to sculpture to music and text, Molly Haslund examines how we as individuals relate to each other and how physical surroundings, situations, norms, hierarchies and body language affect us as people.
Wearing a grey suit, Haslund walks through the morning traffic carrying a giant bouquet of flowers – sunflowers, peonies and lilies. She walks across the pedestrian crossings and along the sidewalks, concentrating as she goes on holding the bouquet of flowers, which has a certain weight and a size that practically hides her shoulders and face. The colourful flowers attract the attention of surrounding pedestrians and cyclists. Occasionally she drops a single flower and walks on as if she hasn't noticed. Kind souls, even in traffic, stop, pick up the flower and run after the woman with the large bouquet to give her the lost flower back.
In gratitude, they are offered to keep the flower, and the day can go on, after this unexpected moment of mutual kindness, on their way through the city to work, classes, meetings, appointments and shopping, now with a flower as a memento. The work is about the joy of helping and giving. And about receiving an unexpected gift.
Completely uncultivated in the world of flowers itself is the phenomenon of 'flower drop', which in Danish is covered by a single and rarely seen metaphorical word 'blomstringsdråbe'. 'Blomstringsdråbe' and 'flower drop' describe the fleeting movement that occurs when flowers or buds that look healthy and well-developed suddenly, and immediately, inexplicably, fall off the plant either in clusters or one by one.
Photo credit: Niklas Adrian Vindelev, Barsk Projects
Molly Haslund (b. 1976, Denmark) is an artist based in Copenhagen whose practice moves between performance, sculpture and installation. Working with gestures, rituals and the configurations of everyday spaces, she explores how identities, social norms and hierarchies are formed and negotiated through our interactions with one another. Her works often begin with ordinary objects, familiar situations or specific places, which she transforms through subtle interventions and choreographed actions. With an understated sense of humour and absurdity, Haslund examines interpersonal relationships, individual agency and the structures that shape contemporary life. She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Glasgow School of Art and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is held in collections including SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde and Wanås Konst in Sweden.