BOTAN

BOTAN is a light sculpture created in collaboration with Japanese fashion designer Akiko Elizabeth Maie for Art Capsul, curator Stacy Engman’s international art and couture platform, presented at EXPO Chicago 2014 as part of the Couture on Canvas program that united Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne design houses with contemporary artists in a single immersive canvas-hung exhibition.

• Art Capsul debuted to critical acclaim at Palais de Tokyo in 2013 alongside George Condo, Marina Abramovic, and Terence Koh before traveling to Asia Society Hong Kong, The National Arts Club New York, and EXPO Chicago, situating BOTAN within one of the most ambitious international art and fashion platforms of that period.
• The collaboration with Akiko Elizabeth Maie extended the ongoing creative partnership between the two artists that began with ONKOCHISHIN (2014), with fabric designed by Maie integrated directly into the sculpture’s LED and diffusion material structure, making clothing and light inseparable components of a single work.
• Musée Magazine (2014) covered the Amorós and Akiko Elizabeth Maie collaboration, affirming the creative partnership’s resonance across both the contemporary art world and the international fashion community.
• BOTAN, the Japanese word for peony, connects the work’s floral title to the botanical and feminine symbolism running throughout Amorós’s practice across LOTUS, PINK LOTUS, and AZURE, affirming the flower as one of her most sustained and resonant conceptual threads.