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„Bouquet II“
Jeroen De Rijke
Willem de Rooij
“Bouquet II, 2005/06” is part of a bouquet series that the
artists Jeroen de Rijke and Willlem de Rooij had made.
The bouquet was first tied by Joseph Free, florist in West
Hollywood, Los Angeles. The Cologne bouquet was created
during the exhibition by the florist Mireille Ruch,
der Blumenladen, Cologne. The text “Bouquet II” reports
on four women whose stories are interwoven through
events and discussions taking place during the Miss World-
Contest 2002. This arrangement is linked to the main
political, religious and cultural conflicts that have determined
international debates, wars and armed rebellion
since 11 September 2001. The photos show the moment
when Agbani Darego, Miss World 2001 from Nigeria, congratulates
Miss World 2002, Azra Akin, a Dutch woman
whose family comes from Turkey. Prior to this, an article
making fun of Muslim critics of the Miss World contest
written by the Nigerian Isioma Daniels, who grew up in
England, caused bloody unrest in Nigeria. As a result, the
Miss World contest was moved from Nigeria to London.
The third woman in the group is the Nigerian Amina Lawal.
She was sentenced by a Sharia court to death by stoning.
The Sharia was introduced into the Muslim northern
part of Nigeria in 1999. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia,
in turn emigrated to the Netherlands, and became a strong
critic of the Dutch immigration model. On the occasion
of Miss World, she attacked the import of the western
beauty model to Africa. “Bouquet II” brings together not
only flowers but also complex and contradictory stories of
migration and exile, of tensions between Islam and Christianity
in Nigeria, of Sharia and “worldly” law, ideas of
beauty and interdiction of image, in addition to post and
neo-colonialism. But instead of subscribing to this theme
of cultural struggle, de Rijke/de Rooij have linked the two
great historical image traditions with the “Bouquet”: the
objectivity of the Christian and secular west and the
abstract floral ornamentation of Islam.
Jeroen de Rijke, born 1970; Willlem de Rooij, born 1969,
have worked together since 1994 – mainly in Amsterdam.
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