Éric Baudelaire
Insetti strani, fili d’erba, 2026

Insetti strani, fili d’erba forms part of Éric Baudelaire’s installation Death Passed My Way and Stuck This Flower in My Mouth (2026), presented as part of his participation in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, “In Minor Keys”.

The core of the installation is a five-channel film set in a vast refrigerated building in the Netherlands, where forty-six million flowers—flown in from farms in Africa and South America—are sold at auction every morning. (…)  The documentary sequences are framed by the presence of a fictional observer who roams the streets at night, inspired by a character from Luigi Pirandello’s short play “L’Uomo dal Fiore in Bocca” (1923) [The Man with a Flower in His Mouth]. The flower, which also gives the installation its title, refers to an epithelioma—a tumour that was incurable at the time Pirandello wrote the play. The protagonist, sensing death upon him, projects himself into the minute details of the world he observes intensely, as a way of escaping his impending fate. Behind the translucent screens of the video installation [presented in Venice], a literary coda to the work is presented in the form of three framed pieces: a photographic portrait of the Man with the flower, and two works on paper made from fragments of the original Pirandello text that inspired the film interpretation, presented in Italian and English.

Text by the artist.