You may have seen the signs by the Morgan Avenue L station or on the gates encircling the Bushwick Market at 54 Wyckoff Ave. mentioning some kind of movement known as “Floraissance Vivarium.” There are no names on the signs, but there is a barcode leading back to a website.

Only by visiting the Floraissance website will you see the name of the person who coined the term: André Feliciano, a Brazilian artist who defines the Floraissance as an emerging era of art culture that shifts the focus from contemporary creation to the intentional cultivation of ideas. Feliciano’s work has also been featured in Photoville 2012, and his camera flower installation has been included in the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM), the Tomie Ohtake Institute and São Paulo’s Goethe Institute. 

The name of the movement itself was inspired by the Renaissance, when European society experienced a type of rebirth in humanism and the sciences. The Floraissance, however, incorporates the word “flor,” which means “flower” in English. According to Feliciano, the image of the flower is symbolic of a feminine epoch, where cultivation occurs not only in the garden but also from human nature.