„For a person who has never seen the Orient, Nerval said to Gautier, a lotus is still a lotus, for me it is only a kind of onion“
Theophjle Gautier, referring to the object being defined through reading the relation to the other.
“A Lotus is A Lotus” deals with the embodied manifestation of cultural phenomena in the digital and analogue object. Research on western desire for consumption of difference is the basis for a feverish dreamscape consisting of lenticularprints, textile works, sound-installations, objects and an artist book.
Quoting discourses around fake and folk the material of this installation is drawing lines between Mughal carpets in Western Museums, fake Balenciagas in Airbnb‘s adventurous journey to Beijing‘s illegal backdoor Pearl Market Shopping experience, almost authentic souvenir making straight from the ancient ancestors in Cairo and 3D stock models on online platforms . Objects within human societies are given meaning through various transactions, motivations, motifs of use and circulations. Several cultural phenomena can be examined through looking at culture from the material realm – ‚A Lotus is A Lotus‘ is focussing on the present-day circulation of exotica.
