(Im)possible Bouquets

Fast-forward several hundred years and impossible bouquets reappear, more haunted, more troubled. Although modern transportation and communications technologies continue to compress time and space, it is globalization that has made impossible bouquets possible. The globalized cut-flower market has made these once-illusory arrangements an easily attainable reality. Nevertheless, artists continue to depict impossible bouquets of sorts, denoting how flora can lay bare the geopolitical realities of territor­ialization and the continued commodification of nature. The works of Taryn Simon and Yto Barrada reveal the complicated and ironic ways in which impossible bouquets are manifested in present-day contexts.