Regula Dettwiler

Flowers are part of our daily lives, they appeal to our senses, and hold personal memories. Artist Regula Dettwiler is interested in the messages and histories that flowers convey. Using both natural and artificial plants, she has created a poetic installation for the ground floor of the State Gallery of Lower Austria.

The exhibition is divided into two sections. The Herbarium of Emotions brings together dried and pressed flowers and plants provided by people from Krems and the surrounding region. These plants symbolize an emotion, a sensation, or a special event the owners associate with the plant. Dettwiler uses these to create a herbarium in the tradition of botanical plant displays, but rather than classifying them scientifically she takes a poetic narrative approach.

The second part of the exhibition is an artistic intervention involving used plastic flowers that were left to decompose in cemeteries. These artificial flowers are brought to life in the exhibition and hung from the ceiling in large bundles and garland forms. The impressive installation was specially conceived for the State Gallery’s exhibition space and is reminiscent of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Dettwiler plays with the difference between real and plastic flowers and their symbolic meanings. As products of nature, real flowers represent life, transience, and beauty in their purest form. However, their beauty is fleeting; they bloom and wither, making us aware of our own mortality. Artificial flowers, by contrast, are products of human creativity. They represent the desire to capture beauty and overcome transience. They therefore symbolize permanence and the control we wish to exercise over nature.

Drawing from natural and artificial plant materials, the exhibition unites two archives of memories. Unforgettable acts as a large repository of private emotions that are made public in the museum for a limited time.