Tag: england

Postcard from London, England: Sunflowers bloom amidst Shoreditch street art

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Sunflowers are heliotropic. To obtain their brilliant golden hue, their stalks turn, embracing the sun as it crosses the sky. Symbols of optimism and hope.

In 2014, a florist in Taiwan donated 1,000 sunflowers to students protesting a trade agreement between Taiwan and China. The Taiwanese students adopted the flower for their namesake – the Sunflower Student Movement.

Of course, the students cannot publicize their objections in China. But in 2022, some 17,000 tourists from China visited Great Britain. So what better spot to slap them in the face with symbolic murals they will recognize instantly – the trendy Shoreditch district in East London – its streets not shirking away from international protest art.

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Postcard from London, England: Women-splaining Guerrillas at the Tate

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Above: “How To Enjoy the Battle of the Sexes,” The Guerrilla Girls, London’s Tate Modern

Flash back to 1984 and the International Survey of Recent Paintings and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Women artists did the math: Out of 165 artists, a mere 13 were women. The Guerrilla Girls were born. They picketed MOMA. As “the conscience of the art world,” they’ve been battling gender inequality and racism entrenched in it ever since.

Why masks? The protesters’ anonymity achieved by guerrilla masks puts the spotlight on the issues instead of the individual women artists or their talents.

The Tate Modern currently has a large wall dedicated to Guerrilla Girls’ posters stridently illuminating gender and race gaps throughout the world.

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Postcard from Bordeaux, France: Cathedral home to royal weddings and horsefeed

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Above, Cathedrale-Primatiale Saint-Andre de Bordeaux

It seems as though almost a dozen streets lead directly to the grand plaza surrounding Saint Andre Cathedral, and all are rewarded with stunning views of its portals, the spires topping its bell towers or the adjacent Pey-Berland Tower. Now well disguised by later French Gothic transformations, the original Romanesque church dates to around the year 1000.

This church was the site of the wedding of 13-year-old Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) and the man who not long after their nuptials became king of France, King Louis VII (1120-1180) – making her queen. That marriage wasn’t a happy-ever-after story, and its failure led her to wed a much younger man, Henry of Anjou (1152-1189), who also would make her a queen, but of England. Will not distract you from the cathedral with the fascinating history of how her marriage to Henry II made the Aquitaine region of France part of England for three centuries.

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