Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler’s
Flora is based on their discoveries about the unknown American
artist Flora Mayo, with whom the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti
had a love affair in Paris in the 1920s. While Giacometti is one of
the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, Mayo’s oeuvre has
been destroyed and her biography was previously relegated as a
footnote in Giacometti scholarship.
Hubbard / Birchler reframe this history
and bring Mayo’s compelling biography to life through a feminist
perspective that interweaves reconstruction, reenactment, and
documentary into a hybrid form of storytelling. As a double-sided
film installation, each side of Flora reveals a different
story while sharing the same soundtrack. The work is conceived as a
conversation between Mayo and her son, David–whom the artists
discovered after an exhaustive search, living near Los Angeles. Flora
generates a multifaceted dialogue–between a mother and son, Mayo
and Giacometti, Paris and Los Angeles, and past and present.