Nicola Dale, ‘A Secret Heliotropism’. “As flowers turn towards the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn towards that sun which is rising in the sky of history” Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History
The work is a visual analogy for the constantly shifting way in which we understand events in history, which changes depending on our position – geographical, political, moral or philosophical. Just as a flower follows the sun round the sky, we too change the meaning of historical events to suit ourselves. Over the course of a year, each of the 320 pages were painstakingly hand cut into a leaf pattern so that the leaves stretch out from the book towards a source of natural sunlight, as though the book itself were growing and changing in the same way history does.