Where can I see her art?
Instagram: @florgodwardart
Website: https://florgodward.com/
“Everything Contains Everything Else” at the Coral Gables Museum (May 24 - Oct 6, 2024). Flor participated in this collaborative large textile installation as part of The Red Thread Collective.
Her studio is located in Red Thread Art Studio.
Flor is a mixed media artist from Argentina who lives and works in Miami, Florida.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw her work was the magical sense of stepping into a kid's colorful pop-up book. However, when I looked deeper I got a feeling of discomfort as there is something bizarre I cannot quite put my finger on. A feeling that resembles the emotions you get while watching Pinocchio, Willy Wonka, Thumbelina or Alice in Wonderland.
Her Story
Flor was born in Argentina. She begins her life story by saying she got married at the early age of 21 years old and moved to the United States to complete her psychology degree in North Carolina.
"I did not practice psychology. We moved to California and I decided to study photography, which was something that fascinated me. My work is inspired by photographer Sally Mann (*). She is a great and maybe controversial photographer who photographed her children naked. And my subject matter were also my children [four now grown children]. I would dress them in costumes or just capture a moment from our day to day mundane life. Basically creating a catalog of their childhood. I used an analog camera and would develop big negatives in a dark room. I loved it. In 1999, we moved to Miami and I studied visual arts. So I started incorporating both mediums, photography and painting. My studio was at The Collective 62 and now is at The Red Thread Collective." Flor was awarded the Best Emerging Artist prize in 2012 at Miami Dade College.
(*) Time magazine
"Mann recorded a combination of spontaneous and carefully arranged moments of childhood repose and revealingly — sometimes unnervingly — imaginative play. What the outraged critics of her child nudes failed to grant was the patent devotion involved throughout the project and the delighted complicity of her son and daughters in so many of the solemn or playful events. No other collection of family photographs is remotely like it, in both its naked candor and the fervor of its maternal curiosity and care."
Where do you find inspiration?
"I work with adult human dynamics depicted through childhood. I try to capture our essence, the invisible and the spiritual. You can see stars on a lot of my work. They represent the energy that you cannot see but has so much strength."
"From my studies in psychology I was drawn to Freud's research on the importance of the first seven years of life and how they condition us. These years leave a footprint in us. I was also drawn to Jung's research on the collective unconscious (*). It shows how there exist general guidelines of human behavior. My piece "Mommy Dearest" incorporates this. It shows a child tightly hugging her dolls. It represents a mother suffocating her children by hugging them too tight”. Flor explains some mothers might restrain their children from freedom but that this feeling comes from a good place; from a place of trying to take care of them. “It is meant not as a critique, but to show a reality. I was once at a showing where a woman cried over this piece saying that as a girl her mother coerced her into being a ballerina. And this is exactly what I am looking for: to leave a message, to leave the viewer thinking, and to make collective art."
(*) Definition for collective unconscious by the Oxford Language
(in Jungian psychology) the part of the unconscious mind which is derived from ancestral memory and experience and is common to all humankind, as distinct from the individual's unconscious.
Flor also makes reference to the Jungian shadow by saying "there is light and shadow within us. And in order for humans to grow and move towards the light we must integrate our shadow. We are not all good nor all bad. Sometimes what comes out is not the best version of us but we are still light beings. I depict this in my Cut Outs made out of wood and different elements. If you look closer, they are not that innocent. There is one work on the Cut Outs series called Tree of Knowledge. It resembles Adam and Eve and represents how consumerism takes us away from our true essence. The leaves from the tree signify toys (Barbie, Mattel, Mc Donald's, etc.)."
Flor incorporates masks and costumes in her work. She says, "I have always loved costumes and the concept of the alter ego. I believe this comes from my mother's parties. We [as adults] use different masks every day to fit in and adapt. It is something we unconsciously do. I also love the circus. When I was little I went to the travelling circus in Argentina, nothing fancy, and it intrigued me. How one person was a juggler and then came back as a dancer wearing a different mask. I did a work depicting a circus tent in wood with different characters within."
Flor bases her series It's a Small World from real photographs portraying famous people when they were children. We see Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Princess Diana, Mike Jagger, Oprah, and even Hitler. She mentions, "You can see both, people that got famous for being good or for being bad. The idea behind it is we do not know what we are going to become. As children, we are all the same."
Moreover she mentions, "Korean cinema fascinates me. It shows the innocence and bizarre at the same time." And says in a grateful manner that her "husband has been a big support and a person that gives her strength."
What are you working on now?
"I am working with my exceptional curator Adriana Herrera for an exhibition in November for Miami International Fine Arts."
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