At a time when people were beginning to gather again in public spaces, “One and Many” presented a large-scale public artwork that invited active, collective reflection on the body and the body politic, self and community, and the relationship between the individual and the whole.
On March 3, 2022, a painting of a poppy field spanning the historic entrance was installed in front of the Riverside Museum. The work was composed of more than 100 individual artworks. During the opening, visitors were invited to select one of these individual works to take home. In return, they filled in the empty space on the canvas revealed by removing their selected piece.
Poppies serve as a central motif in this project. Among the first flowers to bloom in spring, they are emblematic of renewal and are a defining feature of the California landscape, where entire parks are known for the sweeping fields they create across hillsides.
In this work, the poppy became a site of layered meaning. The exhibition reflected on the flower’s historical and symbolic associations, from its ties to fertility and life in antiquity to its connections with dream states, mortality, and remembrance. Since World War I, red poppies have been worn in English-speaking countries to honor veterans. The global history of the poppy also extended to its role in the colonial Opium Wars in China and its continued cultivation in regions such as Afghanistan, where economic necessity drives its production.
