Ancient Web: Sister Unn's Linked a Frozen Rose in Queens to an Online Memorial

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

In 2011, a flower shop appeared in Forest Hills, Queens. You could look through its window, but you could not go inside. Its companion website was more accommodating: it offered visitors a rose of their own.

Visit the surviving Sister Unn's site.

Sister Unn's was an artwork by Bunny Rogers and Filip Olszewski, staged from 2011 into 2012 at 72-32 Austin Street. The real storefront contained drying flowers and a single lavender rose locked inside a block of ice in a lit freezer. The installation was not an actual florist waiting for customers.

The project documentation describes people peering through the glass and sometimes leaving flowers. It also explains the other half of the piece: a website where visitors received or dedicated animated roses. The surviving navigation still points to a Rose Gallery and Dedications, while the enormous gallery itself remains filled with image after image of flowers.

A memorial existing in two places

The title refers to Tarjei Vesaas's 1963 Norwegian novel The Ice Palace, whose characters confront grief and loss. In the physical shop, a flower was preserved in ice and the shop stayed closed; online, roses could continue to accumulate. One half of the piece withheld access while the other invited participation.

The artists' documentation says some colors of digital rose were rarer than others. It quotes Rogers comparing the unreachable storefront to a diorama and the online collecting to a Neopets gallery. That game-like element matters: a small random reward encouraged return visits without making the underlying subject any less mournful.

When the project ended, the shop displayed a rental notice and a farewell letter appeared on the website. The surrounding commercial street changed tenants. The online roses remained.

This is a later historical exception rather than an untouched 1990s homepage. Its preservation value is specific: a surviving piece of early-2010s networked art, designed to connect a physical location with personal gestures made in a browser. Without the site, the storefront would be difficult to understand as more than a strange closed shop.

Explore the surviving rose gallery and the artists' account of the installation.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.