2021
The film above by MZM Projects was made for Nuart introductions below.
Beyond Muralism: Foreword from Nuart Director, Martyn Reed. In curating Nuart’s “Go Big or Go Home” Edition in 2010, we drew a line under the growing idea in our culture that scale mattered – that the larger the mural, the greater the social impact. We started exploring the fringes of our culture, the spaces between public art and street art, art and activism. Here we found a rich and underrepresented body of unsanctioned public art practice, a people’s art created by outliers that fit with our original ethos and form a growing alternative history of art in public space. Nuart’s “vision” – to make art, like music, part of people’s everyday lives – is embodied in Paul’s work. This work also quietly extols the values we set out to use our platforms to promote: fairness, equality, and honesty, while being playful, principled, passionate, authentic, and connecting communities. They’re easy to forget for the viewer in a culture that has quickly grown to accommodate other more neo-liberal aspects of the art establishment. Paul’s work is a valuable reminder that the most powerful work, the best “street art”, has always offered the viewer “agency” – the opportunity to go home and have a go yourself – giving us all the opportunity to become artists and activists.
MZM Projects, Director Statement: “One way or another, even the documentary nature of this project didn’t stop us from paying sentimental tribute to our favourite gay artists: Derek Jarman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Luca Guadagnino and surely Paul Harfleet. With this piece, we want to believe that the day “when homophobia ended” becomes one step closer.” – Kristina Borhes
2015
“Nothing tearful in this language of flowers. Just the need to turn the page with a peaceful act, the pursuit of tolerance through the thoughts scattered like seeds.”
In 2015 Paul Harfleet was the subject of a feature length documentary called ‘Les Pensées de Paul. Directed by Jean Baptiste-Erreca and commissioned by Canal + the film was shown in October 2015 and went on to win multiple awards in film festivals across the world.
“Artist Paul Harfleet’s family had always accepted his sexuality, but it was a different story outside the home. Like many young gay people, he regularly faced abuse. So he developed an artistic work, the Pansy Project, to challenge homophobia and promote respect and tolerance.
For 10 years, Harfleet has been travelling the world, meeting people and planting pansies at the site of homophobia. A single pansy to provoke consciousness, to encourage reflection, to prompt discussion in the public place. A poetic plant for a symbolic commemorative gesture. We follow Harfleet as he brings his Pansy Project to France for the first time. From Paris to Marseille, via Lille, Strasbourg and Avignon, Harfleet finds his own way with his flowers, goes searching for testimonies and exposes the prejudices and discrimination gay people in Europe still face.”
Find out more about the film here.
Films By Paul Harfleet
Increasingly Paul Harfleet creates a short film when he visits a location to plant pansies. This medium allows the artist to reveal more about the nature of the plantings at sites of homophobia and transphobia. These short films have been shown in various festivals and contexts, most recently The Pansy Project Canada was shown at the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Explore the locations page to see the film in the context of the plantings.
The Pansy Project 