The Poetic Language of Flowers

A flower arrangement exhibition
Demonstration of flower arrangements
on February 3, 2018 at 4.30 pm.

Designer of flower arrangement: Jolene Jou
Artistic & Design Planner: Jeane Huang

MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum cordially invites you to The Poetic Language of Flowers, a flower arrangement exhibition.
The exhibition will be on display from 2 to 4 February, 2018.

To complement the exhibition, a demonstration of flower arrangements by Jolene Jou, an expert on flower arrangement, will be organized on February 3, 2018. The demonstration will commence at 4.30 pm.

The Chinese were the first to put water in a container of cut flowers as the offers to the God at temples. The Japanese expanded flower arrangement into a zen school practice. For the modern flowers arrangement, there are no rules at all. As quoted by Hui-lin Li, a Chinese botanist, according to Chinese philosophy, man is conceived as only one of the manifestations of nature that is designed eventually to return to the cosmic element. This basic feeling of harmony with nature, furthered by the introduction of Buddhism from India in the First Century after Christ, has become the dominant force in Chinese culture and history.

The main purpose of the exhibition, The Poetic Language of Flowers, is to create a conglomeration of both the classic and modern poetic expressions of flower arrangements by utilizing available local seasonal flowers and containers. Moreover, the exhibition aims at discovering all possibilities of this art form from our living environment. Accompanied by the presented flower arrangements are also some of the chosen classical poems by famous Chinese poets lamenting on love and admiring flowers. These two art forms transcend time and space to compliment each other. We want to celebrate the harmony between the creativity of human beings and the beauty of nature. We also believe that every one of us is capable of finding his or her very own poetic language in the flower arrangements.

About designer
Jolene Jou has been a flower arrangement designer since 1981. Originally trained as a visual art painter, her flower designing resonates with the aesthetics of East and West. Her style of flower arrangement is more of a free and less ceremonial one. She emphasizes the extension of the nature through the expressions of the flower arrangements and the core of the design has to be the heart of the one that does the arrangement. When she started out in her flower arrangement career in the 1980s, her studio was known as one of the most design-forward in flower arrangements in Taiwan. Ms. Jou is now living and working in Taipei and currently is the Artistic Consultant to DK & D Creative Integrated Co. (Taipei)

About Artistic & Design Planning
Jeane Huang is a Taipei-based artistic innovator. She conducted a master’s degree in Cultural Management at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. She is currently the president of Corecultural Management Co. Ltd, an outstanding multifunctional organization which specializes in developing cultural products, organizing cultural events such as film festivals, music festivals, and art exhibitions, promoting and disseminating art and culture through publications, generating tangible and intangible cultural heritage resources by transforming them into creative cultural tourism sites. The organization is also available for consultation on cultural branding and curatorial practice. She works as an art and planning consultant for China Airlines (Taiwan) inflight magazine, Dynasty, as well as cultural heritage sites
management consultant for the Taipei City Cultural Bureau. She also works as an executive director of the Urban Nomad Film Festival (Taiwan). Her previous posts include a director of the Taipei Film Festival from 2013 to 2015. Ms. Huang is also now a lecturer of cultural management at Taiwan University & Shi-Jian University.

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