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< Synopsis >
To surprise his sister, first as a young child and again in 2021, Albanian artist Endri Dani reenacts the same physical gesture: forcing flower buds to bloom prematurely. For this recent work, Dani purchased red rosebuds from a small family-owned shop in New York City’s Flower District, at a moment when gentrification and corporate-backed interests were actively threatening the survival of the city’s micro-economy of small businesses.
The flowers featured in this piece were harvested in Latin America and shipped to the U.S. to stimulate the emotional sphere of (primarily) American consumers. Through a repetitive, manual process, these buds are transformed into the wonderfully blooming flowers that echo the aesthetic language found in Manhattan’s Financial District, a global symbol of rationality, control, and contemporary economic power.
He concludes his performative act by placing roses in a vase in front of the Woolworth Building—an iconic structure that has embodied American prosperity since the 1920s—and capturing the moment with a photograph taken on his iPhone. Two years later, this image of forcefully blooming red roses—visually seductive yet at odds with their organic conditions—is exhibited in a contemporary art institution.
Endri Dani’s Natura Morta invites us to confront the mechanisms of corporate dominance, economic exploitation, and selective prosperity. Through the metaphor of stimulation and forced growth, he calls attention to the erosion of human dignity and the urgent need for vigilance against the historical instrumentalization of art and the fabrication of narratives by political and economic powers—forces that continue to assert authority over the fragility of our inner world.
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Given that Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation, Dani intentionally chose to film this audiovisual piece using his iPhone to amplify the work’s critical dimension by implicating the very medium through which the images are generated. The digital sphere functions as a tool through which contemporary society aestheticizes narratives of “flourishing”—in an era defined more by emotional corruption than by emotional honesty. Economic power turns us into an instrument, sustaining the illusion that modern life is happy.
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Albanian artist Endri Dani revisits a childhood gesture—coaxing rosebuds into premature bloom—to critically examine systems of economic power, emotional manipulation, and aesthetic control, using the global flower trade, New York’s shifting urban landscape, and the symbolism of the iPhone to question narratives of (partial) prosperity and forced flourishing in late capitalism.
Directed by Endri Dani (Albania)