Do You Speak Flower? – ALUO at Milan Design Week Again This Year

The exhibition Project Denton by students from the University of Ljubljana’s Academy of Fine Arts and Design (UL ALUO) and HEAD – Genève (Geneva School of Art and Design), which was on view at the Mala Galerija of the Bank of Slovenia (MGBS) as part of the 28th Biennial of Design (BIO28) from December 2024 to January 2025, will be presented once again—this time under the title Do You Speak Flower?—at BASE Milano during the Italian Milan Design Week 2025, from 8 to 13 April 2025.

Project Denton, the basis for the current exhibition, took place between April and November 2024, partly in Ljubljana and partly in Geneva. It explored the idea of saying one thing while covertly communicating another. The participating students developed projects that investigated this theme within the framework of feminism, communicating their findings through coded visual language. By delving into the dual nature of floriography (the language of flowers), students from both institutions formed collaborative teams: MA students from the Spaces and Communication programme at HEAD – Genève, and BA and MA students from the Department of Industrial and Unique Design and the Department of Visual Communication Design at UL ALUO. Working in small groups as double agents, and in the spirit of BIO28’s theme Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower?, they created floral images that convey political, feminist, and queer messages.

Contributors: Nguveren Ahua, Laurène Allard, Léa Campos, Marta Córdoba Ruiz, Anes Dhif, Zoja Funda Lipnik, Nia Gombač, Maxime Heta, Nika Horvat, Domen Klinc, Sunwoo Lee, Gabriela Luchetta, Aurore Mesot, Andrija Mihailović, Sven Odermatt, Eva Popit, Marjana Raspor, Lou Revel, Franciszek Sienkiewicz, Marc-Arthur Sohna, Marko Škrbić, Črt Štrubelj, Rin Togo, Živa Vaukan, Nika Vidnjevič

Mentors: Project Denton was led by dr. Alexandra Midal and Emma Pflieger (HEAD – Genève), curator and assistant curator of BIO28, in collaboration with Assoc. Prof. Dr Barbara Predan (UL ALUO), with support from Studio Pflieger-Foeglé and Raphaël Lugassy.

Assistants: Žan Kobal, Tamara Lašič Jurković, Eloïse Vo

In the photo: exhibition view of Do You Speak Flower?; archive of HEAD – Genève.

Production: MAO, Centre for Creativity, HEAD – Genève, UL ALUO, ARIS, Embassy of Switzerland in Slovenia

Project funding provided by: HES-SO, Embassy of Switzerland in Slovenia, and the research programme P5-0452, Visual Literacy at UL ALUO, co-financed by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS).