CAPTURED BEFORE IT WILTS
A Dialogue Between Tara and Emil
The conversation was recorded on the sixth floor of an Haussmannian building, in Emile’s studio. The 10th arrondissement of Paris hums in the background in its own messy glory - even on the Tuesday morning. A fitting backdrop for the work of two artists who navigate the fine line between control and chaos, order and surrender.
Tara’s relationship with nature is one of curation and precision. Trained as a florist, she moved beyond traditional arrangements into floral styling for fashion, art, and editorial projects. Her collaborations with institutions like Fondation Louis Vuitton and Musée de l’Orangerie reveal an approach where florals become more than decoration—they transform into structured, almost architectural elements. She builds compositions with an awareness of texture and space, painting with petals and stems, layering organic forms into something that feels both deliberate and unforced.
There is a tension in her work: flowers, by nature, are ephemeral. They wither, they decay, they return to the earth. Yet in her hands, they momentarily defy this fate. Through her arrangements, she grants them a temporary permanence—an illusion of stillness, of control over time. Her practice is about honoring that tension, embracing both the delicacy and resilience of natural forms.
WHAT CONNECTS THEM IS NOT JUST THEIR SHARED USE OF NATURE, BUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH TIME—TARA CURATES AND COMPOSES FLEETING ARRANGEMENTS, WHILE EMILE ALLOWS NATURE TO RECLAIM AND RESHAPE HIS SPACES. BOTH EMBRACE IMPERMANENCE, FINDING WAYS TO CAPTURE WHAT IS DESTINED TO DISAPPEAR.
Emile works with nature differently. His practice, spanning visual arts, music, and fashion, is rooted in storytelling—his own, and those of the spaces he inhabits. One of his ongoing projects, The Greenhouse, began in 2020 in an abandoned structure. It was never intended as a fixed installation but rather a living, evolving environment where stories unfold. The plants inside are not arranged, they are not framed—they grow wild, uncontained, creeping into the cracks, overtaking the walls, reclaiming what was once theirs.
If Tara composes, Emile observes. He does not interfere with the process of nature but rather lets it dictate the narrative. The greenhouse, left to its own devices, becomes an ecosystem of layered references—fragments of pop culture, personal mythology, and imagined histories. The decay of leaves, the shifting light, the textures of the overgrowth—everything is in flux, and that transience becomes part of the work.
What connects them is not just their shared use of nature, but their relationship with time. Tara’s floral compositions are brief interventions—carefully composed yet destined to fade. Emile’s greenhouse, though seemingly permanent, is in a constant state of transformation, never the same twice. Yet both artists find a way to preserve these fleeting worlds. The lens of a camera becomes a tool of resistance against impermanence, capturing a moment before it dissolves, holding onto something that can no longer be touched.
Beyond materials and process, both artists engage deeply with collaboration. Tara’s work is shaped by the teams she works with, the hands that assemble and arrange alongside her. The act of creating becomes a dialogue—between florist and model, stylist and photographer, between the organic materials and the vision that guides them.
For Emile, collaboration is woven into his narratives. His greenhouse is a stage, and the figures that inhabit it—whether models, friends, or passersby—become actors in an ever-evolving scene. There is a performative quality to his work, a blurring of the boundary between real and imagined. His characters, like his plants, exist in a liminal space—growing, changing, never quite fixed.
In their work, nothing is static, yet nothing is entirely lost. A floral composition before it wilts, a greenhouse before it is overtaken—each moment suspended in a fragile balance between what is created, what disappears, and what remains.
FIN