Sunflowers Smell
Yadanar
“Rituals, these seemingly random acts, don’t guarantee our wishes. But they do give us a sense of reassurance and satisfaction,” Yadanar said. The presence of a religious and superstitious mother figure has fueled the artist’s stubborn worldview — one bound by its own logic and magic, straddling between control and chaos.
Sunflowers Smells live performance was taken place on /Shi Exhibition Yangon in the end of 2022, where the artist performed in a glass facade room where the audience had to watch from outside. Yadanar resurrected dead sunflowers that day.
Diana
“These happy flowers actually smell horrid!”
I met Yadanar here. At her first performance score.
She showed me a page full of scribbles:
“Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell! Sunflowers smell!”
In 2021 when our world collapsed, most reacted quickly. Violently. Tragically.
Yadanar is a slow reactor. She absorbs first, processing for an ungodly stretch of time. Then, she reacts, in most situations, years too late. By the time Yadanar reaches a realization, the toast has been burnt, and the culprit has gone free.
In 2021, Yadanar started noticing the smell of sunflowers.
Since 2021, a chronic sadness has set in stretching from the mountains from the north and the sea to the south. A deep malady vibrating from the heart of Burma. Yadanar thought as an artist, she should at least brew potions for other sad maidens like her. (Act 2: I Brew Potions For Sad Maidens)
As an end to her ritual, Yadanar decided to capture some happiness on bedsheets. (Act 3: Is Happiness Temporary?) Her mother also bestowed an Innwa period (14th-16th century CE) poem for this occasion,
“ငါတို့ချစ်ခြင်း ကွင်းအောင်းတစေ၊
နေတိုင်းမွှေတဲ့၊ သက်ကြီးဝန်တို၊
မြင်တိုင်းမုန်းစရာ၊ ကုန်းမအို၊
ရေလိုခမ်းခြောက်ပါစေသား”
နေတိုင်းမွှေတဲ့၊ သက်ကြီးဝန်တို၊
မြင်တိုင်းမုန်းစရာ၊ ကုန်းမအို၊
ရေလိုခမ်းခြောက်ပါစေသား”
We are never sure if this is a love poem or a curse.
Sunflowers Smell (2021) is a trivalent series beginning with a writing (Act 1: Nay Kyar Pan Tway Nan Tal), performance (Act 2: I Brew Love Potions For Sad Maidens) and installation (Act 3: Is Happiness Temporary?)