PVTS

The title PVTS is a reduction of the French word pavots (poppies) with the vowels removed. It echoes the abbreviated codes of fashion design (PNTS, SKRT), a world in which the artist worked for over a decade. Here, the flower becomes a visual and emotional garment. Structured, indexed, and worn by memory.

The poppy is at the center of this series not only as a botanical form, but as a personal and cultural symbol. In RIMMA’s childhood, poppies grew in her grandmother’s garden, quietly and rarely. At that time, planting them was discouraged, associated with fear, control, and the narcotic connotation of opium. Most people pulled them out. But when a few survived, they appeared like forbidden visitors. Luminous and otherworldly.

In Tatar visual culture, shaped by Persian and Central Asian influences, the poppy often appears as a decorative motif: embroidered into towels, stitched onto dresses, printed onto everyday objects. When the artist later encountered enormous poppies in Parisian boutiques, the memories returned and the impulse to begin her visual practice with this flower took root.

Rendered in fine, rhythmic lines on dark, saturated grounds, each painting isolates a single bloom — fragile, bent, captured mid-breath. These poppies do not represent an idea, they hold it. They speak of transformation, delay, fragility, and the quiet will to endure.

Presented at Espace Braque (Paris, 2023) and currently on view at Kunst- und Kulturscheune Katzow (Germany, 2025), this series continues to evolve through new works.