LES FLEURS DU MAL

Futures 14, curated by Patrick T. Murphy The RHA Dublin 14 November- 19 December 2014

Les Fleurs du Mal or ‘Flowers of Evil' takes its title from the 1857 volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. Inspired by Baudelaire’s poems which bemoan the homogenization of a then newly modernized Paris, Greenan taps into the pervading sense of dread and emptiness that characterized her backpacking experiences in Central and South-East Asia. The growing industry of spiritual tourism had permeated the landscape, cannibalizing distinct cultural motifs and excreting them as hippie appendages. 

​Lurking within the dayglow installation is a nightmarish scenario: A shamanic rave-promoter guides visitors to a hut; Upon entering they are invited to drink a psychotropic substance from an ossified turtle with a bong-shaped head; The faint sound of psytrance indicates the presence of a second room, a shanty house clad with plastic covering; Flickering fluorescent lights illuminate a carnivorous plant digesting a dread-locked head; A piping mechanism connects the liquefied brain to the turtle apparatus in the connecting hut, seemingly pumping its fluids forth for the next unwitting tourist; The cycle implicitly continues.

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