TULIP MANIA

sotheby’s (2023)

Tulip Mania (2023) is a conceptual intervention examining the relationship between beauty, speculation, and perceived value. Conceived in dialogue with the Remember Me series, the work was presented during an invited NFT auction at Sotheby's and references the seventeenth-century Dutch Tulip Mania, drawing a historical parallel between one of history's earliest speculative market bubbles and the emergence of blockchain-based digital assets.

The NFT featured a moving image of a transparent bouquet of tulips from the Afterlife series. As a concluding gesture, a bouquet of fresh tulips accompanied the work, linking the living flower, its transparent counterpart, and the historical symbolism of the tulip within a contemporary marketplace of digital ownership. Together, these elements reflect on how beauty, scarcity, and collective belief shape perceptions of value across time.

Rather than offering a critique of speculative markets, Tulip Mania considers the enduring human impulse to assign extraordinary value to symbols of beauty, rarity, and desire.