Brândușe 1998

Curator: Before us is Constantin Flondor's "Brândușe," a watercolor and drawing piece from 1998, rendered on paper. Editor: It feels… delicate. Ghostly, almost. Like memory itself blooming across the page with watercolor. Curator: Botanical art has long served as a site for scientific cataloging, but also for asserting specific narratives about nature and its relationship to power. Consider how the colonial gaze often informed what aspects of nature were considered worthy of recording. Flondor here seems to subvert that somewhat, no? Editor: Absolutely. It’s a vulnerable, incomplete record, not striving for clinical precision but echoing a feeling. Notice the sketched outlines—ghosts of flowers past or flowers to come. It’s not about a finished, perfect bloom, it’s about potentiality, the constant becoming. I love that whisper of impermanence. Curator: Indeed, the use of watercolor becomes incredibly pertinent here. Its fluidity, its tendency to blend and bleed, speaks to ephemerality, refusing fixity. It allows for a much more open and perhaps, feminine, dialogue with the botanical subject. What we are witnessing could speak to queer ecology in contemporary theory. Editor: Oh, I’m hearing you. A queer ecology where forms are fluid, boundaries are blurred… I love the subversion of expectation here. I'm getting echoes of Virginia Woolf here - stream of consciousness, painting rather than pinning down the feeling of blooming. Curator: The title itself "Brândușe"—it grounds us in a specific regional context, inviting consideration of place and the politics inherent in claiming a landscape through art. It challenges notions of universalism within botanical illustration and urges viewers to consider their relationship to the Romanian landscape. Editor: Right. The artist isn't just presenting "a flower". This whispers a love song to a particular place, a local ecosystem, like a precious secret entrusted only to those who truly pay attention. Curator: So, it’s about refusing singular perspectives and embracing multiplicities. Editor: Yes. A rebellion in watercolor washes. Makes you want to grab a brush and mess around, right? To surrender to the unpredictable beauty of what blooms if you just let go.