Installation opening “Sag mir wo die Blumen sind”

In the courtyard of the Gvozdanović Palace, the Museum of Arts and Crafts is installing a floral and sound site-specific installation by Vanja Blumenšajn, an author whose work stands on the border between art and craft. In his practice, dried flowers cease to be mere decoration and become sculptural material. From plant elements he builds temporary environments of powerful visual impact that raise the question of transience and of the changing of space. The courtyard of the Gvozdanović Palace is not a neutral backdrop in this: the materiality of the Palace has already been visibly eroded by time, which provides a particularly suggestive context for such an approach.
It is precisely in this encounter of dried and fresh plants that the idea of transience is further emphasised. The installation also has a sound layer. The space will resound with Marlene Dietrich’s song Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, one of the most powerful anti-war songs of the 20th century. Flowers thus also become bearers of a message of pacifism at a time when wars are once again drawing closer to our everyday life.