What do Martha Rosler’s flower fields hide? The subtle radicalism of the artist’s early films
From inside her car, Martha Rosler films the flower fields on a hillside along Highway 5, a road that follows the U.S. West Coast from Mexico to Canada. The long shots with idyllic scenes evoke the Western pictorial tradition. The image of the immigration police driving at great speed on the highway offers glimpses of the hard-working conditions of illegal Mexican workers on these flower fields. The piece ends with images of border patrol checkpoints.
An early video work by Rosler, Flower Fields anticipates, despite its simplicity, some of the artist’s analytical interests: the hidden social oppression in everyday life, gender and class. Together with Backyard Economy I and Backyard Economy II (Diane Germain Mowing), this is one of only three works by Rosler filmed in Super 8.
