Martina della Valle will present her recent work “One flower, one leaf”, which is a photographic series documenting the results of Ikebana workshops held in collaboration with Ikebana artist Rie Ono in different cities in Italy.
In their workshops, Della Valle and Ono connect the traditional Japanese art of Ikebana – the art of arranging flowers – with a site-specific observation of the contemporary urban landscape. Themes such as the study of marginal and refused areas, the traces of the human intervention on the urban vegetation, the value of the concepts of time and emptiness and the capacity of Ikebana and photography are merged.
With the participation of people from the neighbourhood, the surrounding vegetal landscape is explored: plants, flowers and branches are spontaneously picked for the vegetal bouquet. After that, guided by the Ikebana teacher, the participants create their own arrangement. The photographic documentation of the resulting creations forms an ideal portrait of the natural native landscape and maps the explored area. After Prato and Rome, the project now arrived in the third city, Bolzano in South Tyrol, Italy, where it is part of the exhibition “Flowers are documents” at AR/GE Kunst.
At Zabriskie, Martina Della Valle will present the photo editions “One flower, one leaf #1, #2, #3”, and florist and ikebana artist Satoko Hatayama will prepare arrangements that will be shown during the evening.
Martina della Valle graduated in 2003 after a 3-year program in photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy. As an artist and a photographer, she has exhibited her works on several occasions inItaly and abroad. She lives and works in Berlin.
martinadellavalle.info/
One flower, one leaf#1 – Prato (Dryphoto art contemporanea)
Martina della Valle
photo edition, 50 copies
A5 ink-jet prints on Hahnemühle fine-art paper
120 €
One flower, one leaf#2 – Roma (MAXXI Museum)
Martina della Valle
photo edition, 50 copies
A5 ink-jet prints on Hahnemühle fine-art paper
120€
