EAT flowers invites pause. To look longer. To let what you see stay with you. WILLAS contemporary presents EAT flowers, a solo exhibition by Cig Harvey at IVAR – The Matchstick Palace in Stockholm. The exhibition unfolds as a quiet invitation to see the world with attention — to notice what endures. EAT flowers began as an exploration of how colour, gesture, and the language of flowers can express love, fear, and hope. Through photographs, neon pieces, text, and film, Harvey uses flowers not as decoration but as a way of speaking about resilience and the choice to keep living. Within the historic Matchstick Palace, these works converse with light and architecture, creating interiors that hold both intimacy and presence. At the heart of the exhibition is Harvey’s film EAT flowers, following her as she creates daily photographs for her friend Mary, who is undergoing treatment for a rare leukemia. Each image becomes a gesture of care — a way of sending colour and space into a hospital room otherwise closed off. The work stands as a testament to friendship, and to the ability of art to sustain connection where words fall short. Across image and film, Harvey’s work asks simple but persistent questions: What do we notice? What do we keep? A child in a doorway, a hand on a table, a burst of flowers fading at the edge — small scenes that hold a quiet gravity. In dialogue with The Matchstick Palace, these images become records of time, tenderness, and endurance. “There is war. There is a virus. In the time it took to write this sentence somebody died, somebody was born, a language disappeared, a mass shooting occurred, a forest burn begun, an insect crushed, an idea inched forward. My pictures are an urgent call to live. A primal roar. Be here, now. Experience this. Feel this. My pictures are of flowers, but they are not about flowers; they are about living and dying.” – Cig Harvey

Cig Harvey is a British born artist and writer, who lives in Maine, USA, working in large-scale color photography and creative non-fiction. She uses both images and language to explore sensory experiences and elevate the everyday. Rich in implied narrative, deeply rooted in the natural world, her work is devoted to the topic of what it is to feel.