Semioflower
2021

The series 'Semioflower' began in 2021 and it was largely influenced by semiotic studies, and especially by Plato's writings about the mystery hidden behind signs. The nature of signs as representations of ideas, the transformation of thoughts into images is the abstract reflection of this series. Using as a starting point the structure of a flower Anca created abstract images that still contain natural elements, such as the configuration or the shape of natural petals. She described the resulting images as "emotional diagrams', being the direct result of the intimate feelings and emotions she experienced while thinking of the meaning of a flower.

I plant flowers under my skin and I watch them bloom Many artworks do not always unfold as I might expect. As if the whole process pulls out one unresolved memory after another bringing out more of myself than my corporeal presence does. Sometimes I am a mature woman and sometimes a 7-year-old girl. These two personas are always present in the work. One is unaware of surroundings, intuitive and alluring, uncanny and fictitious; the other one remembers the time, the undergoing psychoanalysis for more than a decade, the missing words and loneliness. I was always afraid of something, silence, noise, darkness, insomnia but also being too awake, I feared crowds, I feared loneliness but most of all I feared being a woman. I use writings for clarification. I search for awareness. All human actions are allusive to the subconscious, but the words seem more of direct contact and more evaluative. As a little girl, I used to draw flowers. Later on, I had to kill the girl not letting her grow into a woman; the flowers felt like a subject reserved only to men. For years I could understand the reason behind this belief. Journaling my hectic and volatile emotions I’ve got a performance of honesty. The truth was out and the work is also about truth. I saw the girl and I saw the woman that remembers the pain. That woman scared of being an object of adoration, fearful of control… fearful of being just a flower. While painting on “Semio-flowers” I realized that I tried to take out the feminine self, out from my paintings for many years. I didn’t want my works to reveal my gender as if they would have had less value and this form of self-repression didn’t affect my works because the dreamer always wins but drifted me to writing more and more. The true self can’t be silenced, will always find a way to express unencumbered, freely. Just as I drift from one series to another with each new flower I drifted from one emotion to the other and accepted my vulnerability until my flowers became of steel swallowing in all my feminine parts. I painted flowers to have a feminine companion, someone with whom I can peel off the hard layers protecting my emotions, my vulnerable femininity, someone I can look in the eyes and recognise as myself. The solid contour of my body felt more changeable; a twinge more akin to decay but yet a sense of familiarity, an admission of nature. Humans are nature.

The unconscious diagram of an emotional remembrance My flowers look like the unconscious diagram of an emotional remembrance. I sense rhythms and I see them. I read about sacred geometry. I read about many things. Have I understood life better? No, only flashes of remembrance of divinity. A flower. Breach into what is beyond my understanding. An aspect of femininity? Perhaps that too. Just flowers. Just silence. I am the ground where they have fallen. Just rhythms. Just time. I dream. I plant flowers under my skin and I watch them bloom. It doesn’t hurt when they pierce my skin. It doesn’t hurt when they dry up. I sketched flowers today. One petal after another pulled out of their natural shape, contorted like my moods, organised like my dreams. The one I wish to be; the flower, the harmony, the balance, the colour. The whole. I planted seeds into my heart and I watched them grow until they began to bring out the distorted lines of my being. I sketched flowers yesterday and the week before... They are ready now and I still cannot paint them. There is no noise inside them. I barely spoke these past days. But the voices inside my mind are louder and louder. Years ago I would have cut my hand instead of painting flowers. So many voices in my head swimming slowly; so many men telling me that I will not succeed in art as a woman. Have I listed? Sometimes. I cut the flowers and I tried to pull them out from my heart but the roots were knitted tight like fibres in a rug. I am forever dreaming. I am forever waking. Now I sleep; now I wake. And now I remember who I am. ‘
Notes on Semioflower / 2021