‘Afghanistan is a perfect balancing point between inaccessibility and accessibility’. (Our translation)

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Les Territoires de l’opium, 2002

Although historically flowers have been a symbol of non-violence, notably in association with the movements of the 1960s, they are also the subject of power struggles in the world.

The proposal explores the role of opium poppy cultivation and the flower itself in the present-day power struggles that have ravaged the Afghan region for decades.

It presents an endless field of poppies seen through a translucent golden screen. The visitor turns around a plexiglas enclosure covered with one-way mirror film in which different varieties of poppies are reflected ad infinitum.

This seemingly close yet inaccessible space illustrates the contradiction around poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, as well as the surreal vision of war being waged in fields of flowers—an image that has travelled as far as the West.

On one side, a small gap has been left open, through which a single visitor can pass. A narrow path invites them to advance into the middle of the field, their gaze sweeping over a fictional horizon in which the flowers are reflected ad infinitum.