At the beginning of February, London-based artist Hormazd Narielwalla visited us and personally presented us with his artist’s book Fear of the Flower (2023) and a monograph of his work to date, Hormazd Narielwalla – Legends and Icons (2025). “I would love to gift it to you if you think this is something that fits in your collection,” he wrote to us when he was visiting Berlin as a participant in the group exhibition “Orbital” at the Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery.
“Fear of the Flower” consists of pages from an old pattern book (“Methode de Coupe” by Ladevèze & Darroux, originally published in 1860; Narielwalla used the 14th edition from 1949), which he painted over with flesh-colored images of bodies, mostly views of men’s anuses. Hormazd used Giorgia O’Keeffe’s sexualized flower paintings from the 1920s to 1950s as a reference.
Art historian Dr. Michael Petry writes in a text on the method, which is also published in “Legends and Icons”:
[Narielwalla] has worked through more or less the complete “Methode de Coupe, by Ladeveze/ Darroux” (14th edition, no less!), erratically, wildly, hotly, vividly, expressively, passionately making pink and purple marks across the yellowing black and white pages – but those are of trousers, while this is clearly a buttock spread open with the two testicles hanging very loose and low beneath. It implies that well-made trousers should fall to the ankles with ease.
Narielwalla lays his drawings out over the pages, sometimes […] playing with the odd imagery on the sidelines (as in La Jaquette which has printed the back side of a naked man). His buttocks stare at us as much as the one Narielwalla has painted on top of the printed figure of a jacket’s pattern. Altered image after image build a forest of flower upon flower, a verityble weddingbouquet of rosebuds. Clearly the anus is in the focus of these works and it is certainly the first time Narielwalla has used openly queer imagery in his work. […] The puzzle, the code, the underlying structure of the missing bodies that these patterns allude to, is the focus.”
In his other works, Hormazd, who studied fashion design in England and worked with a tailor, also combines European patterns with Indian printing techniques and architectural conceits to suggest new multicultural identities. On his website, he writes about his artist’s book featuring edited Bowie motifs, “Diamond Dolls” (2021): “As a young gay man growing up in India, Western culture hardly permeated. It seeped in very gently, drop by drop. Then in the 1990s MTV started broadcasting music videos from the West and my first glimpse of David Bowie was from the 1970s, with his bright red hair and green, glass-like eyes. His beauty captured my imagination immediately. He showed me a different kind of masculinity.”
The 60th of 150 copies of “Fear of the Flower” has now found its permanent home in the Schwules Museum. Our head of the art collection, Julia Hartung, is “very excited about this exciting new addition to our art collection!”
Hormazd Narielwalla was born in Mumbai, India, in 1979. He studied fashion design in Wales from 2003, then fashion design and communication in England, and graduated with a doctorate from the University of the Arts in London in 2014. His works have been exhibited worldwide and included in major art collections (including the Tate Archive, V&A, National Art Library, Yale Centre of British Art, Brown University). In 2025, he received a commission from the British Museum, and was also shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize.
Hormazd Narielwalla: Fear of the Flower, 2023
Co-published by EMH Arts, London, and Concentric Editions, 2023. 84 pages, archival inkjet print, bound in a hand-sewn neoprene cover, 14.8 x 10.5 cm, Edition: 150 copies: No. 60/150 has been in the art collection of the Schwules Museum since 2026 as a gift from the artist.
The volume “Hormazd Narielwalla, Legends and Icons,” edited by Emma M. Hill, published by the Studio of Hormazd Narielwalla, London 2025, has been in the library of the Schwules Museum since 2026 as a gift from the artist.
Illustration: Hormazd Narielwalla, “Fear of Flower,” p. 33f.