Doreen Wittenbols:
Happening

form & concept | September 2023

In 2021, Doreen Wittenbols transformed eleven copies of the 1966 housekeeping manual Woman’s Own Book of Flower Arrangements into Paintings for Our Mothers, a text-based sculptural artwork that questions restrictive and regressive notions of femininity in Western society. Drawing from the same source material as Paintings for Our Mothers, Happening continues Wittenbols’ exploration of restrictive gender roles and hegemonic cultural conditioning.

Wittenbols writes, “I equate the dreary black-and-white photographs of dated flower arrangements from Woman’s Own Book of Flower Arrangements and its ‘do and don’t’ text instructions to the darkness enveloping our current world, which seems to be moving backward in time with its mobilization against women and LGBTQIA+ rights.” Set in a faux kitchen that evokes stereotypes of feminine domesticity, Happening features paintings and sculptures that utilize the vernacular of the still life in surprising and unsettling ways.

A series of 12 diminutive paintings sets colorful flowers against the rigid grid of a black-and-white tablecloth—and the emphatic directives of the Woman’s Own book. Airy pencil outlines of flower arrangements resembling funeral bouquets evoke society’s marginalization of aging women, while vividly colored chalk drawings on vintage blackboards evoke hard truths of a girl’s passage into womanhood. Sculptural hangings made from vintage florist’s foil and a table installation bristling with flower labels use fragile and tough materials to explore societal double standards of femininity.

Despite its varied representations of the challenges women face, Happening isn’t a survey of social malaise, but rather an artful rearrangement of troubled reference material that encourages people to resist societal pressures. Wittenbols thoughtfully and playfully critiques how Western culture reinforces the social status quo of the gender binary. Her dynamic body of work celebrates individual expression and challenges the public to resist the “pleasant-as- possible” melancholy of entrenched narratives, much like contemporary drag queen icon RuPaul, who is one source of inspiration for Wittenbols.

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