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Opium wars
Lina Maria Giraldo’s poppies at Green Street; ‘Film Rush’ at the ICA
BY RANDI HOPKINS

Cultivation of the opium poppy is said to have begun around 3400 BC in Lower Mesopotamia; the Sumerians referred to it as "Hul Gil" — the joy plant. Traffic in this powerful, profitable plant has been a source of euphoria, addiction, medicinal high hopes, and violent political struggle ever since, inciting wars, inspiring poets, and claiming victims. The poppy flourishes in dry, warm climates across Southern Asia and Latin America, especially Colombia, which exports the drug to industrialized countries like the US. We’ve replied by using crop-dusting airplanes and pesticides to eradicate Colombia’s poppy fields. But what has that done to the country’s natural environment?

In "Lina Maria Giraldo," which opens at the Green Street Gallery on July 15, Colombian-born, Boston-based Giraldo sets images of the poppy seed pod against those of hovering planes as she explores the realities of the war on drugs and how it affects her people. Giraldo grows her own poppy plants in her garden and uses them as models for drawings she makes on translucent plastic decals; she then applies the decals to windows. The proportions are skewed: the distinctive, bobble-headed poppy seed pods take center stage as the planes buzz around them. Augmenting the work’s gently menacing aura, video and surveillance technologies will project temporary images of passers-by, images visible from outside the gallery only, around the clock. Just keeping the homeland secure.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, meanwhile, is augmenting its "Getting Emotional" exhibit with a film and video series it calls the "Friday Reel Rush." Next Friday, July 22, the ICA will screen Aleksandr Sokurov’s Father and Son, which took the international film critics’ FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes 2003. Its theme is the complex relationship between a father and son who have lived alone together for years in their own private world of memories and daily rituals, and it enters their lives when the son is about to enter adulthood. Sokurov is a master at putting the inner world onto the silver screen; nothing could be more "emotional" than this exploration of the painful and profound nature of love.

"Lina Maria Giraldo" | Green Street Gallery, 141 Green Street, Jamaica Plain | July 15–August 30 | 617.522.0000 | www.greenstreetgallery.org | Father and Son | Institute of Contemporary Art, 955 Boylston Street, Boston | July 22 | 8 pm | "Getting Emotional" | ICA | Through September 5 | 617.266.5152 | www.icaboston.org


Issue Date: July 15 - 21, 2005
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