elegy for an aesthete

Elegy for an aesthete – Bring me Sunshine - orans 
Oscar Wilde was often caricatured as a sunflower in the press and satirical publications of the day. The sunflower was the favoured symbol of the aesthetic movement a group of fashionable figures in the art and literary world who pursued pleasure, sensuality and beauty for its own sake.
To portray Oscar as a delicate flower was clearly intended to rob him of his masculinity and satirise him as effeminate. Homosexuals would often be mocked or parodied as delicate wallflowers or pansies.
Oscar commented that the sunflower was akin to a gaudy lion which seems at odds with the limp wristed parody in the press. Peter and I adopt the head of a sunflower as an act of transcoding, to take what is used as a negative symbol to oppress and transform it into a mode of empowerment.
The hybrid figures embody an alien-like presence and the upward facing open-palm pose of orans is a signifier of spirituality or ‘other-worldliness’.