The 4 Seasons of Veronica Read

In the sculptural video installation The Four Seasons of Veronica Read, Ataman turns his camera to the peculiar life of Veronica Read, the Great Britain National Plant Collection Holder of Hippeastrum. Divided into four segments, each representing a season in the annual cycle of the plant, the film records Read’s dedicated efforts to ensure the yearly blooming of her Amaryllis Hippeastrum. With over 900 Hippeastrum bulbs in her two-bedroom house, Read’s obsession with these flowers is all consuming. The film simultaneously appears as a parody of a garden program and poses as a documentary about the Hippeastrum flower bulb, chronicling every meticulous detail which could be of interest to plant lovers. However, Ataman’s work is in fact a portrait of a woman wholly devoted to the nurturing of these bulbs, which contain nothing beyond the hope of a flower.

Ataman’s long-standing commitment to probing unconventional, marginalized people who determinedly pursue and fulfill their obsessions and fantasies stems from a genuine artistic interest in the exploration of the self through others who resonate the artist’s own obsessions and fantasies.