Flower dress

Flower dress (1994) by Berend Strik combines two potent symbols: flowers — symbols of nature, beauty, fragility, and the cycle of life — and the dress — a garment that simultaneously reveals and conceals the body, marking gender, occasion, and identity.

Strik frequently works with clothing as a marker of identity and social role. The dress made of flowers suggests both the natural world incorporated into human culture and the ephemeral, temporary nature of beauty — flowers wilt, dresses wear out.

The combination of flower and dress also evokes vanitas painting, where flowers represent the transience of beauty and life. Yet Strik's textile interventions — which add actual fabric to photographs — literally make the image into a kind of flower dress: something natural transformed into art object.

Sources: Galerie Fons Welters