Temporary Bookshop XXI
6 August – 3 September 2026

Looiersgracht 60 is pleased to present Temporary Bookshop XXI alongside the fourth edition of the Public Research Residency 'Impossible Bouquet', co-curated with artist Romy Yedidia. Established by Looiersgracht 60 offers a literary backdrop for those seeking to explore the residency’s central themes more deeply.

Impossible Bouquet IV examines the cultural conflation of Woman and Nature through the charged symbol of the flower. Moving between personal experience, ecofeminist theory, art historical imagery such as Dutch floral still lifes, the body as image, and more, Yedidia’s layered research investigates how beauty is cultivated and arranged — and the conditions of desire, control and extraction are often obscured in the process.

Temporary Bookshop XXI invites visitors to further engage with the conceptual framework behind Impossible Bouquets through a handpicked selection of titles and publications that have informed and expanded Yedidia’s research. Spanning foundational texts on the intertwining of Woman and Nature, writings on human desire and the tulip as an object of beauty, value and exchange, as well as essays on visual culture, representation, motherhood and care.

Available Books and texts:

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972.

Cluitmans, Laurie, and Heske ten Cate, eds. Mothering Myths: An ABC of Art, Birth and Care. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2025.

Dinnerstein, Dorothy. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New York: Other Press, 1999. First published 1976.

Goldgar, Anne. Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.

Hooks, Bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation, 21–39. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Ortner, Sherry B. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974.

Pavord, Anna. The Tulip. London: Bloomsbury, 1999.

Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. New York: Random House, 2001.

Roach, Catherine M. “Loving Your Mother: On the Woman–Nature Relation.” Hypatia 6, no. 1 (1991): 46–59.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

Szendy, Peter. For an Ecology of Images. Translated by Marco Roth. London: Verso, 2025.