Nordic Award 2020

Deux Mille fleurs/Two Thousand Flowers, Søren Krag (Denmark)

The term 'Millefleurs', from French meaning literally "thousand flowers", refers to a background style used in medieval and early renaissance tapestry consisting of many different small flowers and plants, usually shown on a darker backdrop, as though growing in grass. Weavers were obliged to repeat figure designs by members of the painters’ guild, but could often design the floral backgrounds themselves.  In an effort to further extrapolate this reversal of the image hierarchy, figures and narrative have been omitted altogether, focusing solely on the 'background'. At the core of the project are computer-generated, hyper stylized, symmetrical ’flowers’. After establishing a number of fixed parameters two thousand unique flowers have been generated algorithmically and digitally woven into a tapestry. The project has been created in collaboration with engineering PhD student Jonathan Riise.