2022
Archival pigment print on fine art paper
90 x 60 cm
Edition of 50 + 1 AP
Each print is hand-signed and individually numbered by the artist

With her 2020 and 2021 prints Julie Progin builds on her research about classical Chinese porcelain ware motifs. She depicts traditional ceramic vessels and adorns them with a blend of intricate floral compositions inspired by the wan hua dui or mille-fleurs design—a dense arrangement of various flowers symbolising “all the flowers bestow their blessings”—and drawings of ordinary kitchen and cleaning implements.

Julie Progin shares, “As a person with mild OCD, my compulsive cleaning behaviour resumed during the pandemic lockdowns. To rid myself of these uncontrollable impulses I redirected my obsessions to an activity that would demand focus—drawing excessively detailed patterns. With its multitude of colours, complex and densely interwoven layout, the mille-fleurs design is time-consuming and challenging to draw. I took inspiration from this joyful motif to refocus my constant need for cleaning, sanitising, and tidying and turn my impulses into humorous evocations of nature.”

Every square centimetre of her 2020 print is filled with details in a compulsive excess of activity, with cleaning gloves turned into peonies, pump dispensers or vacuum cleaners transformed into blooms.
A year after finishing the first print, Julie Progin started drawing a matching pair this time turning to her cooking addiction as a source of inspiration to reshape kitchen implements into flowers.

Each drawing in the Obsessions series is complemented by a deceptively minimal background, filled with tone-on-tone patterns—quietly busy—inspired by motifs Julie Progin extracts from silk brocades and paper sheets commonly used as lining in the production of boxes to store precious items such as the mille-fleurs porcelain vessels.