Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler: Flora Redux

Art works and photographs by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander BirchlerTexts by Stephanie Barron, Maeve Connolly, Philipp Kaiser, Christina VéghTranslations by Alice Cazzola, Eva Dewes, and Marie Frohling Hardcover / 8.85 x 11 inches775 images / 392 pages Two important new works by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler, Flora and Bust, both 2017, have joined the Modern’s permanent collection, which already includes their Grand Paris Texas, 2009, and Holes, 1997. Flora is based on Hubbard / Birchler’s discoveries about the unknown American artist Flora Mayo, with whom the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti had a love affair in Paris in the 1920s. While Giacometti is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, Mayo’s oeuvre has been destroyed and her biography relegated to a footnote in Giacometti scholarship.  Interweaving reconstruction, reenactment, and documentary into a hybrid form of storytelling, Hubbard / Birchler reframe history through a feminist perspective and bring May