Well then, Can I Walk Beside You?, 2013
cut paper, scissors
72” x 198”

Installed at the Trajector Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium

"Well, then, can I Walk beside You?" provides the visitor with a place to make paper flowers. To make the paper flower, simply cut shapes out of the folded sheets of paper laying about on the desk, but make sure leave the cuttings on the floor. The cuttings (and the flower you make if you wish) become part of the larger installation, adding a wild field of color, much like the iconic California poppy does when the climate is just right. "Well, then, can I Walk beside You?" honors the flower everywhere, be it the poppy/tulip/chrysanthemum*/dandelion, etc. and what each is a placeholder for, while offering a place for visitors to engage with each other, with the installation, and with their own rememberances of color and flower fields. Feel free to take off your shoes, move the papers all around, and especially…take those you like. The title "Well, then, can I Walk beside You?" is from a song written by Joni Mitchell. Niederlander has long used songs in titling in her work, often referencing a particular moment in history through the shared experiences in narrative music.
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MUM: 1. the flower of D.H. Lawrence's story "The Odour of Chrysanthemums" (similar ideas to Marcel Proust and his madeleines, those smells which take you certain places in your remembered life) 2. mum's the word, keep mum. do not repeat the secrets you have heard 3. a mother. the woman who's words, dreams, and ideas we hear in our head....whose experiences a child absorbs the way one absorbs a specific smell.