Broken Flowers

This work reflects on a deep and important love, and explores the transformative influence of relationships on people’s lives. The project tells a deeply personal story in which universal themes such as love, loss, grief, and growing up gradually unfold.

Marlike and Ronald met in 2006, in their early twenties. From that moment on they were inseparable. In 2008 they travelled across Africa in an old Land Rover. A month after returning home, Ronald’s eldest brother died by suicide, abruptly ending their sense of youthful innocence. After eight turbulent years marked by long road trips and repeated attempts to repair their relationship, they separated in 2016 while travelling by car toward India.

Years later, Marlike returned to the material she had made and collected, a body of tangible and intangible memories. Presented without chronology and through associative sequencing, the work reflects how the love story is stored in her memory: fragmented, disjointed, and shaped by loss, grief, and the lasting effects these experiences have on intimacy.