Roci Malaysia

THE FLOWER POPwer

Rauschenberg, Robert

1990

Screenprint

88,5 x 62 cm

This is a series of paintings made for ROCI MALAYSIA, part of
the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange project, and
exhibited at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
in 1990. In addition to printed canvases, the series includes
screen-printed images derived from Rauschenberg’s black.
Black and white photographs taken during a research trip to
Malaysia in 1989.
Between 1984 and 1990, accordingly, Rauschenberg and
his team held the ROCI exhibition in ten countries—Mexico,
Chile, Venezuela, China, Tibet, Japan, Cuba, the Soviet Union,
East Germany, and Malaysia, in order of itinerary—before the
project concluded in 1991 with an exhibition at the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. By 1991, it had generated
more than 125 Rauschenberg artworks, over 2 million people
around the world had seen a ROCI show.
Roci consisted of a 7-year tour of 10 countries around the
world. The name of the project comes from “Rauschenberg
Overseas Culture Interchange” in which the acronym forms
R.O.C.I., which was the name of his mascot, a tortoise.