• Workspace with large windows. There is a desk, a shelf, a smaller round table and large sheets of paper or photographic print on the floor. On the wall, hang several photographic prints showing the same flower.

    gmmmsm01-megan-hoetger.jpg

    View of the Molenwijk workspace during a studio visit with Ratu R. Saraswati, 28 October 2022. Photo: Megan Hoetger.

  • In an exhibition space, a large photographic print with green foliage is suspended from the ceiling. To the left, a photographic print has been placed on top of a plant in a vase. To the front of the print, a long line of flower prints that stretches across the floor is partially visible. On the walls, there are more prints with images and text.

    gmmmsm02a-ratu-r-saraswati.jpeg

    Exhibition installation image. Ratu R. Saraswati, A rising flower makes a garden (2022). Werkplaats Molenwijk, Amsterdam, December 2022 - January 2023. Photo: Ratu R. Saraswati.

  • In an exhibition space, a large photographic print with green foliage is suspended from the ceiling. To its sides, we can find a red chair (right) and a wooden table with some photographic material on top (left). To its front, a long line of flower prints stretches across the floor.

    gmmmsm02b-ratu-r-saraswati.jpg

    Exhibition installation image. Ratu R. Saraswati, A rising flower makes a garden (2022). Werkplaats Molenwijk, Amsterdam, December 2022 - January 2023. Photo: Ratu R. Saraswati.

  • Four white A4 sheets, with Dutch words handwritten in black ink, are stuck to a wall.

    gmmmsm03a-ratu-r-saraswati.png

    Exhibition installation image. Ratu R. Saraswati, A rising flower makes a garden (2022). Werkplaats Molenwijk, Amsterdam, December 2022 - January 2023. Photo: Ratu R. Saraswati.

  • A white A4 sheet is stuck to a wall.

    gmmmsm03b-megan-hoetger.jpg

    Exhibition installation image. Ratu R. Saraswati, A rising flower makes a garden (2022). Werkplaats Molenwijk, Amsterdam, December 2022 - January 2023. Photo: Megan Hoetger.

  • A person sits in front of a large photographic print that hangs from the ceiling in the middle of a space. The print partially depicts green foliage. They hold a piece of paper and are gesturing with their right hand. In front, a long line of flower prints stretches across the floor.

    gmmmsm04-megan-hoetger.jpg

    Performance documentation. Ratu R. Saraswati, A rising flower makes a garden (2022). Werkplaats Molenwijk, Amsterdam, December 2022. Photo: Megan Hoetger.

  • A Rising Flower Makes a Garden 

  • The Garden as Material, Map, Metaphor, State of Mind, by Megan Hoetger 

First rice field passed

Second sea passed

Third coconut tree passed

Fourth day passed

Fifth year passed

Sixth decade passed

Seventh century passed

—Excerpt from Parable of the Tongue by Ratu R. Saraswati

A text tracing nearly one year of imagining alongside the writerly voice of artist Ratu R. Saraswati and its capacity to weave together the everyday and fantastical, structural and spiritual, ethical and aesthetic; and of imagining with her into the spaces it makes – the spaces that it performatively writes into being – for faith-filled enchantment in the realms of both critical, decolonial analysis and contemporary artistic practice.

Commissioned by Framer Framed, Amsterdam on occasion of Ratu R. Saraswati’s exhibition A rising flower makes a garden⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ at the conclusion of Saraswati’s stay in Framer Framed’s Werkplats Molenwijk residency program.

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