Political, bold, vibrant, and provocative, Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? examines the figure of floriography, a code hidden within flowers to transmit secret information. The core of this transdisciplinary and multifaceted exhibition scrutinizes the pivotal role of floriography used by women to portray their identities. In that sense, flowers pave the way for antagonistic and alternative interpretations of both the meanings and the context in which they are decrypted. 

The exhibition draws on critical theory to define self-identification as an aesthetic and political act that resonates with vanquished, marginalized, forgotten, or invisible minorities. Given that flowers represent both the commodification of women into an idealized beauty paradigm and serve as a feminist, anti-colonial, gender, and queer cryptology, the title Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? reflects this dual perspective. The Biennial displays an ongoing investigation that questions the role of the exhibition in providing answers, and instead wishes to open a series of conversations with designers, artists and the public. 

Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? celebrates floriography as an autonomous language, specifically examining its cryptic nature in a prolific international body of works spanning diverse media and disciplines, such as design, applied arts, visual art, books, films, installation, architecture, etc., a perspective that has been scarcely investigated until now. 

An expanded exhibition format will focus on a series of interconnected contemporary and historical projects, and specific commissions and will trace a history of floriography, weaving a web of its contemporary occurrences, punctuated by a series of condensed anachronic case studies that connect them. Furthermore, it will explore and highlight the strategic nature of artifice and ruse that lies behind the fragility and beauty of flowers. Today, flowers offer a possibility to thwart, criticize, and deconstruct multiple figures of tyranny.

Against the grain of design historiography, put forward by the disciples of the Modern Movement, Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? delivers a renewed perspective on expanded design, articulating how these cunning strategies can constitute a valid perspective for reconsidering the discipline.

Stay tuned to know more about exhibition chapters! 

About Alexandra Midal, curator of BIO28

Professor in design at the MA Space & Com at HEAD-Geneva HES-SO and Head of the department of Critical Thinking at Ensci-Les Ateliers, Alexandra Midal is an art and design historian who combines practice and theory-based research as an artist-curator and film essayist. She is the author of many books, including Design by Accident: For a New History of Design, Sternberg Press (2019), and catalogues such as Top Secret, cinéma & espionage, Flammarion (2022), Girls, The Troopers of Dance. Aesthetization of Politics and Manipulation of Entertainment, Faire (2021); Politique-Fiction, Cité du Design (2012); Tomorrow Now, When Design Meets Science Fiction, MUDAM (2007); etc. She has curated a number of international exhibitions about visual culture, design, and politics: Top Secret, Cinémathèque Française, Paris and La Caixa, Madrid; Barcelona, Saragosse, Valencia, (2021-2024); Popcorn - Art, Design et Cinéma, MAMC, Saint-Etienne (2017); Eames & Hollywood, ADAM, Bruxelles (2016); Politique-Fiction, Cité du design, Saint-Etienne (2012); Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Wolfsonian FIU, Miami (2012). Her films: Mind’s Eyes; Shake, Shake, Shakers; Heaven is a State of Mind; Mind Player; Possessed; Home Sweet Ho(l)me(s); Domestic Psycho; Hocus Pocus: Twilight in My Mind; Politique-Fiction; Eames, An Atlas; Villa Frankenstein, etc. are screened in museums worldwide.

About Emma Pflieger, assistant curator of BIO28

Emma Pflieger is a French-based designer who graduated from HEAD-Geneva (MA Espace & Communication) in 2016. In 2017, Emma founded her design studio with Antoine Fœglé. Both share a cross-disciplinary, research-based approach and produce spaces, installations, and graphic design. In 2021, they received the "Agora Curator" grant for "Keep It Flat,"  a research project that takes the form of a book and an exhibition project dealing with the propagation mechanisms of conspiracy theories. She has worked on and developed different types of projects alongside institutions such as the Centre International d'Art Verrier, Meisenthal (France), HEAD-Genève (Switzerland), CAPC Bordeaux (France), MAMC Saint-Etienne (France), Nov Gallery (Switzerland), Mudac, Lausanne (Switzerland), and Hermès (Switzerland). Since 2022, Emma has been a tutor at the MA Space & Communication at HEAD in Geneva.

From left to right: Emma Pflieger, assistant curator, together with Alexandra Midal, curator of BIO28. Photo: Lucija Rosc

ALEXANDRA MIDAL

Dr Midalis a professor in design at the MA Space & Com at HEAD – Geneva HES-SO, and Head of the department of Critical Thinking at Ensci-Les Ateliers, as well as an art and design historian who combines a practice and theory-based research as an artist-curator and film essayist. She is the author of many books including Design by Accident – For a New History of Design, Sternberg Press (2019) and catalogues such as Top Secret, cinéma & espionage, Flammarion (2022); Girls, The Troopers of Dance. Aesthetization of Politics and Manipulation of Entertainment, Faire, (2021); Politique-Fiction, Cité du design (2012); Tomorrow Now, When Design Meets Science Fiction, MUDAM (2007); etc. She has curated a number of international exhibitions about visual culture, design and politic: Top Secret, Cinémathèque Française, Paris and La Caixa, Madrid, Barcelone, Saragosse, Valencia, (2021-2024); Popcorn - Art, Design et Cinéma, MAMC, Saint-Etienne (2017); Eames & Hollywood, ADAM, Bruxelles (2016); Politique-Fiction, Cité du design, Saint-Etienne (2012) , Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Wolfsonian FIU, Miami (2012). Her films: Mind’s Eyes; Shake, Shake, Shakers; Heaven is a State of Mind; Mind Player; Possessed; Home Sweet Ho(l)me(s); Domestic Psycho; Hocus Pocus: Twilight in My Mind; Politique-Fiction; Eames, An Atlas; Villa Frankenstein,… are screened in museums worldwide.

ALEXANDRA MIDAL

Dr Midalis a professor in design at the MA Space & Com at HEAD – Geneva HES-SO, and Head of the department of Critical Thinking at Ensci-Les Ateliers, as well as an art and design historian who combines a practice and theory-based research as an artist-curator and film essayist. She is the author of many books including Design by Accident – For a New History of Design, Sternberg Press (2019) and catalogues such as Top Secret, cinéma & espionage, Flammarion (2022); Girls, The Troopers of Dance. Aesthetization of Politics and Manipulation of Entertainment, Faire, (2021); Politique-Fiction, Cité du design (2012); Tomorrow Now, When Design Meets Science Fiction, MUDAM (2007); etc. She has curated a number of international exhibitions about visual culture, design and politic: Top Secret, Cinémathèque Française, Paris and La Caixa, Madrid, Barcelone, Saragosse, Valencia, (2021-2024); Popcorn - Art, Design et Cinéma, MAMC, Saint-Etienne (2017); Eames & Hollywood, ADAM, Bruxelles (2016); Politique-Fiction, Cité du design, Saint-Etienne (2012) , Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Wolfsonian FIU, Miami (2012). Her films: Mind’s Eyes; Shake, Shake, Shakers; Heaven is a State of Mind; Mind Player; Possessed; Home Sweet Ho(l)me(s); Domestic Psycho; Hocus Pocus: Twilight in My Mind; Politique-Fiction; Eames, An Atlas; Villa Frankenstein,… are screened in museums worldwide.