Revolution in Bloom
Strange Flowers is the title of an online exhibition co-curated by Elizabeth Fleur Willis and Nnena Nwakodo for collective The Earth Issue. It refers to the haunting protest song,
Strange Fruit, recorded most famously by Billie Holiday in 1939. Originally penned as a poem two years earlier by writer Abel Meeropol, the lyrics describe the horrifying lynching of Black Americans in the Southern States, comparing victimsâ bodies to fruit hanging on trees. The legacy of that brutal history continues today in the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other victims of racial violence, whose bodies the curators compare to flowers: âTaken without consent, their stems ripped from the earth, their connection to life severed, petals pulled and crushed underfoot.â