Mariken Kramer, I hide myself within my flower, 2023

The artist’s book I hide myself within my flower consists of both photographs and text. The photographs depict various plants picked in the meadow and on the hillside of the mountain farm Lie, situated on the far end of the lake Møsvatn, 900 meters above sea level. The texts in the book are fragments of a larger story, memories from Kramer’s past, reactivated in the final months of her mother’s life and during the vigil at her deathbed. Each paragraph is numbered in the same way as the photographs and bear the name of the plants depicted. The book’s design and references bring to mind presentations of flora in botanical books and herbariums. But the images can also be understood with reference to still life genre, especially the vanitas motif, which remind us of the inevitability of death and transience of life.