Lips Made of Petals, 2025
Martyna Pekala
Video, 8:52 min
Lips Made of Petals follows a character from a fictional video game navigating the realities of being a migrant in the ‘physical world’. The film portrays their quest to touch grass in order to go back online. This concept is inspired by the real-life mobile app that requires its users to send a photo of touching grass to unblock their social media, as a literal gesture of connecting back to reality. As the character abandons their digi-den, the online fantasy continues outside of the screen. The work blends 2D and 3D elements in a camp and surrealist manner to convey a fake and fever-dream-like environment, blurring the line between the ‘fakeness’ of the digital space and the ‘realness’ of the offline world. Just like the interface of social media apps frames reality as fantasy, Lips Made of Petals engages with this notion critically through the many layers of detachment. The film culminates in a tulip field, the picturesque cover image of the Netherlands, but also a symbol for migration, since the flower isn’t native to the country. Through referencing such a strong cultural symbol at its most manicured inauthentic glory, Martyna Pekala reflects on her own migrant status in the Netherlands and how the online space is a refuge for displaced identity.