Hilla Kurki: Almost All the Flowers in My Mother’s Garden

Almost All the Flowers in My Mother’s Garden is a 144-page work containing more than 100 pictures of flowers, mainly photographed in the author’s mother’s garden, and intimate memories of mothers by anonymous daughters. In the book the memories are merged together, and thus do not personify in one specific mother, making even painful memories easier to encounter. The flowers in the pictures symbolize the care, or the lack of it, that forms the basis of our growth.

The background of the work is the artist Hilla Kurki’s realization of the silent gap between herself and her mother. In conversations with other artists of her generation, many recognized something similar about their own relationship with their mothers. In the book the collected memories form a text, that alternates with the flowers, where artist from e.g. Finland, France, Slovenia and Hungary try to remember their mothers.

Second edition of the book has been printed in 2023. It has a new cover (see other images).