Danh Vo transformed a recently acquired 1970s Fiat hearse into a mobile flower shop nomadically serving the people of Brussels for this year’s Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Vo collaborated with young car mechanics and electromechanics in training at a local school (Athénée Royal de la Rive Gauche, Laeken) to collectively design the transformation of the hearse. They worked together for months, taking art and floriculture courses, and composing bouquets using plant and mechanical components. 

“I never knew how to approach that idea of a mobile flower shop, but sometimes you just have to wait for the right moment,” said Vo to Michaël Bellon of Bruzz Magazine. The work “ties-in a bit with Ikebana [the Japanese art of floral arrangement]. I have always been fascinated by the way Sōfū Teshigahara [the Ikebana grand master] worked. He used ceramic for his vases, but he used iron just as much. … Combining disciplines makes you think out-of-the-box in search of a common ground.”

“Danh works a lot with assemblages, with putting together elements that come from different cultures or that seem formally or emotionally opposed, or even incompatible. The poetry that emerges from that contrast is very much present in his sculptures and installations. Here, the challenge and the thinking was to transform this unique car into a combination of motors and plants, of mechanical and organic elements, as well as to bring together two practices –auto mechanics and floral art– that are usually considered contrary, and very gendered.” —Daniel Blanga-Gubbay of Kunstenfestivaldesarts

Photos: © Nick Ash