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Las Flores del Mal, Carina Evangelista’s first solo exhibition, is based loosely on Charles Baudelaire’s collection of poems first published in 1857—initially censored and condemned but celebrated over time—Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil). Discrete objects and groupings of objects in the show comment on the treachery of beauty used as a rhetorical device that masks what menace, melancholy, or tragedy ferments underneath.

“Je vaisà l'amour!" (Caravan of Tears) comprises model cars each matched with an enamel floral brooch to represent famous people killed in a car or a plane—people who loomed so large in their lives it was almost as if their lives had to end in no less spectacularly intense way than in car crashes with the aura of their personae enmeshed in the aura of the iconic cars they died in.

“Lotophages” features vintage botanical prints of poisonous plants that grow in the Philippines printed with edible ink on sheets of edible wafer similar to the Communion host. Meant to be ingested, “Lotophages” alludes to the lotus-eating from the Odyssey—a whole island’s addiction to the narcotic properties of the lotus, held hostage to stupor and stasis in corrosive apathy.

“Hissing at the Shrapnel’s Scream” is a wall installation of floral still life drawings or paintings taken from auctions of works attributed to Adolf Hitler. Known to have failed as an art student, the question is of tasked as to whether Nazism would have taken root and blossomed had he succeeded as an artist instead. The title alludes to an excerpt from Mein Kampf: “The scream of the 12-inch shrapnel is more penetrating than the hiss from a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers. Therefore let them go on with their hissing.” Asserting the superior power of impunity and violence over any editorial critique, it subverts the pen’s might over the sword.

“Les Bijoux” (The Jewels) is a row of glass paperweights that gleam like gemstones or gorgeous coral but are in fact the microscopic views of diseases that serve as a portrait of the Philippines–dengue, measles, HIV / AIDS, Barrett’s disease (that President Duterte suffers from), and mononucleosis, which increases the risk for lupus. We associate Noli Me Tangere as a metaphor for social cancer but it more specifically refers to a type of skin cancer, lupus erythematosus, which led to deposed President Marcos’s death.

“Phytolacca” is silk crepe soaked in magenta ink made from the poke berry fruit gathered by the artist from her backyard. Pokeberry is a weed that upon growth in the Spring is said to have leaves that are edible. It grows tall like a tree, bears dainty white flowers that turn into green beads that ripen into deep magenta berries. The fruit–like every part of the plant once mature–is in fact extremely toxic. The fabric soaks up the ink. A dress will be cut and sewn from the fabric. Overtime, oxidation will turn the exquisite magenta to sepia, making the artwork complete.

“Bangkay” (Carcass) is a porcelain cattleya inscribed with lines in Tagalog translated by Evangelista from Baudelaire’s poem, Une Charogne (A Carcass):

Mga binting nakatirik, tulad ng mahalay na babae
Nagbabaga’t nagpapawis ng kamandag
Bagot at pauyam na nakabukaka
Nangangalingasaw ang sinapupunan.

“Pintig ni Saro” (Saro’s Pulse) is a fetal heartbeat syncopated to the syllabication of the lyrics of the song “Itanong Mo sa mga Bata” (Ask the Children) by the band Asin. An homage to Asin member Saro Bañares, killed with a gunshot to his forehead at a videoke bar in 1993, it is also a wordless percussive dirge for the children killed as collateral damage in the unfolding war on drugs. Pregnant women count among reported casualties, killing both mother and fetus, killing two hearts at once, killing children before they’re born to respond to the questions the song asks. The left ear of the headphones is attached to a heart carved based on DaVinci’s anatomical drawing of a heart. The staccato of beats sounds more like gunshots than a heartbeat.

The animation “Sa Dibdib Mo’y Buhay” (In Your Heart Alive) features pipit birds flying in the pattern made by hands conducting the last verse of the national anthem. While birds dancing in the air might seem whimsical, the animation channels another song, “Ang Pipit,” addressed to a man who flung a stone at a pipit. The bird cries in the song, “If I die, there is a pipit who will weep.” The last line of the anthem goes, “Ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo (To die for you).” It is one half of the unspoken dyad that implies, “Ang pumatay nang dahil sa iyo (To kill for you).” A tandem animation piece, Avesde Rapiña, will later be produced showing a cockfight with the soundtrack of the last verse of the anthem improvisationally inspired by how Jimi Hendrix played Star-Spangled Banner in Woodstock 50 years ago.

A stoneware rendition of Odilon Redon’s illustration for his 1890 portfolio of prints inspired by Les Fleurs du Mal presides over the exhibition. A black flower with sockets for eyes, it’s a flower that reeks the sadism, lust, and avarice in the opening line of the poem that prefaces Baudelaire’s collection of poems. In his notes to his translation of this preface, Eli Siegel wrote, “The catalogue of the ugly must be complete, complete, complete, and complete always and desiredly. If this catalogue is complete, the ugly would at last be looked at unflinchingly, and this means with conquering antagonism.” In her iteration of Baudelaire, Evangelista turns the catalogue of the ugly into a catalogue of the beautiful with surfaces waiting to be scratched to reveal what’s grotesque or lamentation.

Las Flores del Mal showcases works that dialogue with one another in a pinball machine of references and narratives that illustrate rank beauty or plaintive cries.

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