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Cape Town Floriography

  • Salma Price-Nell

Cape Town Floriography: Story telling in the language of flowers is a multi-genre project which brings together an interdisciplinary group of people to develop new forms of storytelling in response to the multiple political and ecological crises of our time. Focusing on plants and their people in Cape Town, it brings forth stories about place, history and belonging; stories which root us in the past and prepare the soil from which more just futures can grow. Inspired by communicative practices with flowers of both plants and people, it mixes methods and forms developed in the arts, natural sciences and humanities to not only showcase the beauty of plants, but to further explore the complex entanglements of human and more-than-human life worlds, research hopeful emerging ecologies and add critical layers to current discussions of the Anthropocene. Cape Town Floriography, a Nowseum project by Melanie Boehi, explores the fascinating social history and influence of the flower sellers of Cape Town and takes a look at how flowers have influenced the sociopolitical standards of the time. The first installation was developed as a series of posters exhibited as flower wrapping papers. ​ "For long flower sellers have used newspaper sheets to wrap up flowers. Old newspaper was thereby given a second life. Cape Town Floriography is inspired by this recycling of newspaper, however it changes the direction of the cycle by producing a new paper that can only be read once the flowers are unpacked." - Nowseum blog

When Melanie approached me with the task of designing a poster to use as flower wrapping, I loved
the idea. This was the perfect medium to exhibit this story, a history that most Cape Townians don't know about - even though most of them see these flower sellers daily.
There was no set brief in terms of aesthetic, other than it being a black and white print, which allowed me to put some ideas forward. While experimenting, I discovered that the borders and edges of the paper would be the most visible part when wrapped. I passed the idea of illustrating a detailed flower border to Melanie who loved the idea so much that she used the border for the entire poster series.
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