In 1961, at the age of 29, Sylvia Plath wrote the poem Tulips, two years before her suicide. At the time, she was hospitalized following surgery, and the tulips, sent to her as a gift, pierced her inner world with unexpected force. Their red tongue-like petals, too bright, too invasive, intruded upon the quiet, sterile space she had sought for herself.

In the museum space, twelve red, wounded glass tulips - the same number as in the bouquet Plath received - hang from the ceiling the way she imagined them : “they seem to float, though they weigh me down, upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, a dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.” I hung them upside down as if rooted above in an upper soil as an inversion of a point of view and consciousness, hinting at a distorted perception of reality, on a path toward madness.

Plath’s private Tulip Mania deviates from the harmonious aesthetic of 17th century Dutch still-life paintings, when tulips symbolized enduring botanical beauty. Over time, the tulip became a seductive emblem of marketable beauty, greed, and social status - an economic bubble that swelled and burst.

Tulips, 2025
25×10×10 cm

Glass
Created in the glass workshop of Yuri Stepanov