Flowering Under Stress

A timely and imaginative visual exploration through watercolors, with an essay by Zadie Smith.

Flowering Under Stress presents a wide selection of works from Ana Prvački’s daily watercolor practice that began during the Covid19 pandemic. It guides us through the inner and outer landscapes of our recent years, as we grappled the complex emotions of a world turned upside down.

A therapeutic visual journey that reveals Prvački’s signature playful wit, the watercolors address current conversations on history, ecology, sexuality, technology, self care and mental health. Offering an imaginative and improvisational approach to the world, Flowering Under Stress encourages us to recognize our shared humanity and to look for hope and possibility in unlikely places.

Ana Prvački’s background in music, theater, mask work, architecture, fine art, and beekeeping inform a cross-pollinating practice ranging from watercolor to video, performance, and mixed reality. Solo exhibitions and projects include the Gropius Bau, Berlin; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Turin; Artists Space, New York; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore. Her work has been included in 13th Gwangju Biennial, 14th Istanbul Biennial, Bangkok Arts Biennale in 2020, dOCUMENTA 13 2012, Sydney Biennial 2007, Singapore Biennial 2006 and the Turin Triennale 2005. Performances have been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Chicago Architectural Biennial.

Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time, as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia, three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, and Intimations, and a short story collection, Grand Union. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Smith was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, and was listed as one of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. White Teeth won multiple literary awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith is currently a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.