Meet Nadia Tahoun | Co-Founder of Flower Shop Collective

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nadia Tahoun and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nadia, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Flower Shop Collective (FSC) was born out of a need to cultivate a community centered on care and skill-sharing in the art world. The art industry, like so many others, promotes hyper-individualism and that is something I want to decenter. As an artist and member of society I think it is important to ask yourself, who are you helping? Who are you hurting and how can you help more than you hurt?

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I am the owner and cofounder of Flower Shop Collective, an art + fabrication studio that cultivates the ideas of emerging artists working towards more equitable futures. We do a lot of different things, but our main resource we offer is sliding scale studio access in addition to other artist-tailored services with a focus on Black, Brown, Indigenous, minority ethnic, and immigrant artists. I believe we might be the first to do so. We started out as a digital platform and then opened our doors in 2020. Opening a studio centered in community during the height of the global pandemic was and continues to be a challenge in every way imaginable. Starting a business is very hard and comes with a lot of sacrifices; but if the work doesn’t feel like a calling (which community organizing for creatives feels like to me), I can’t imagine doing it.

Earlier this month we exhibited a show in Paris at the Louvre as a part of the Focus Art Fair. It was our first international show and a very proud moment for us.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
1. Pot LA! They are a full service pottery studio & school. They are also the first community pottery studio run for and by people of color. I have followed their journey for a long time; watching how they navigated the pandemic as a small business was very inspiring!

2. Montana Shop LA. I’ve never been so this one is on my list too, but it looks beautiful and we use a lot of Montana paint at our shop! Many of my peers and close friends are within the street art community and it is a medium I have always had appreciation for. It is one of the highest forms of community driven art and there is so much history of resisting systemic oppression within the artform. Chicano street art is legendary and has influenced so many global art centered resistance movements.

3. The Hammer Museum. As their mission statement says, The Hammer Museum at UCLA “believes in the promise of art and ideas to illuminate our lives and build a more just world”. I think all museums need to reevaluate their roles within their respective communities, and I like how the Hammer Museum seems to understand that what they curate and what they exhibit should be representative of all the people of LA and political movements at large.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The people who make up my inner circle. I am nothing without them. Everything I have been able to accomplish so far is directly linked to the large amount of support I have. There are too many people to name and their love comes in many different forms. Notes and actions of encouragement, solidarity, loving me enough to hold me accountable when I need to be, the reminders to drink more water than coffee and the reminders that I deserve to be here are really what keep me going.

I am a big reader of fiction and theory so there are many writers that have shaped my outlook on life. bell hooks’ and Gloria Anzaldúa’s writings have probably had the largest imprint on my worldview thus far.

Website: https://www.flowershopcollective.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flowershopcollective/

Image Credits
Photographer Credits: Jessica Xie, Peter K. Afriyie, Andrea Martucci and Nadia Tahoun.