Making your own flowers: Heirblooms by Sandra Dans
Sandra Dans has cracked the code to coping with millennial misery and anxiety: buying flowers is not enough, you have to make your own.
I wonder what was going on in the mind of the very first human who saw flowers and thought, "You know what, that would make for an awesome gift for a celebration!"These organic creations became symbols of life, love, and mortality. We gave praises to flowers and turned them into symbolism in art, music, and literature. This is one of the ways a human can appreciate beauty. For Sandra Dans, flora is used as a method of establishing one’s self. However, not in the sigma male or girl-boss kind of way. This work is a recognition of who she is and how she came to be.
You see, the Dans family has a lasting relationship with the arts. She has a cousin in video production, an aunt who is an illustrator, a husband who is a designer, and of course, the national artist Aracelli Dans. There’s also another grandmother who works closely with plants. All of their work manifests itself in Heirblooms. One has to wonder if there is immense pressure in the Dans family to engage in a creative pursuit. But it seems their relationship with art and creation is not of pain or rigor. It is not about executing with discipline and strict adherence to the rules of a chosen medium. How their family does art is closer to how Aristotle views leisure, a wise use of time.
These images are Sandra Dans' contribution to their family's relationship with flora. The execution is of the [Millennial] generation's use of color, aesthetics, and fascination with abstraction. Especially the need to have something abstract but made with realism. Perhaps the generation trying to grasp whatever it can since it was deprived of what it needs to have. A generation that will be forever burdened to prove itself. Despite data disproving the myth of laziness, wage stagnation, and lack of housing, it will never be accepted as truth. Sandra Dans engages with this millennial fixation by grasping what is real: The fluidity of life, flowers, and family. This isn’t an attempt to establish dominance but to be in union with what really matters. It is photography as a means to participate.
The approach of each image is simple: Dried flowers (or shells), through the liquid, are photographed with intense color. There is a playfulness with the execution. The process wasn’t as surgical as a commercial shoot or as candid as documentary photography. All this playfulness can’t help but underly what it means to be branded as a millennial: Too young to own wealth, too old to harness the internet, but skillful enough to make it on our own. So what is left to do is to own what we have. Giving praise to those who gave us all the opportunities despite history not being favorable. And so we make our own flowers. The sensations of looking at these images parallel recognizing what it means to have our minds wander. A desire to look at the aesthetics for pleasure and not a pursuit. It’s as if there is a need to be still and stare rather than concentrate on impending labor. However, we swirl through and float on.
The thing is, making flowers is our balm for millennial misery. Looking at the rhythm, the colors, and the biology of Sandra’s images has a therapeutic effect. It’s as if we can forget our woes by remembering who we are, where we came from, and what we can make. Sure, Miley Cyrus can buy herself flowers, but it’s better to make it. Let Sandra Dans’ Heirbooms serve as a blueprint that by making work recognizing our family, you can find your footing. Maybe through that, we can work our way out of our own miseries.
Title: Heirblooms
Photographer: Sandra Dans
Design: Exhibition, Parola UP Fine Arts Gallery, Quezon City
About: (Excerpt) Heirblooms is my attempt to engage with this transgenerational floral fixation on my own terms. In this series of photographs, I take fresh orchids, decaying flowers, and delicate seashells and drench them in vibrant chromatic, physical, and photographic distortions as a way to locate a vertex that resonates with me, a filthy millennial. The sparkling colors are abstracted forms rendered on shimmering paper and are a visual bridge, a rainbow connection if you will, knitting these age-old natural forms with the digital age's penchant for reimagining reality. They stand as an invitation not only to witness the collision of the organic and the abstract but also to ponder the transformative power of heritage.
-
Written by A.g. De Mesa
(With help by James Lontoc)
Post Script
“We’re going to have an artist talk in our next class, please prepare your questions if you have any. Attendance is a must”. I wasn’t as conscious or as engaged in photography let alone art. This is probably one of the first times in my youth that I will have an encounter with an artist. I looked up her work and admired the realism and skill to put up her flowers and handkerchiefs.
So the day came, I don’t have an estimate of Aracelli Dans’ age (Not that it matters) but all I know is she wasn’t what I was expecting her to be. No scarves or berets or a cane. I don’t remember what she was specifically wearing but I can vividly remember her aura: It was full of candor. She was straightforward in talking about her work. She wasn’t telling us about the darkness of the human condition or some concept popular amongst the post-modernists. She was talking about her desire to work on her paintings. An urgent need to let it to the world if you will. I wanted to know for sure: So I asked a question. “Ma’m I’d like to know if you have any meaning behind your work, why did you choose to make your work in that manner?” She gave a wry smile and said “Because I wanted to and I can so why not?”
The entire auditorium chuckled. I have a smile from ear to ear as I nod and return to my seat. I got an A+ in the course.
