Gipsi Wort

Inspired by her family’s tradition of making tea from flowers and hand-pressing them, Leena creates a series of collages that layer these delicate blooms onto wood. These works reflect her lifelong fascination with the creatures that inhabit flowers—be they called jinn or fairies, entities that transcend both Eastern and Western mythologies. Leena sprinkles these invisible fairies into the work, bringing them into a feminine space. The childlike and feminine tone of the work, along with the way it is installed with scented cinnamon tea bark is a way of inviting the viewer into a more feminine space where different things become visible. Little people in the flowers, and the tea leaves.

Gipsi Wort is a flower from the mint family which is very common in the middle east. Europeans reffered to it as “gipsi wort” becausse the fortune tellers used to use it to dye fabrics in black, and for makeup and eyeliner. Its mystical history along with its use in dying and decorating the eyes of women and the way in which it traveled across the world made it a very intriguing plant to choose and play with.