Acts of Gathering brings together a number of artworks that celebrate and interrogate the nature of food culture in a rapidly changing world, inviting us to consider the ceremony and symbolism that shape our connections to food, to each other and to the earth.
Screening of Theatrum Botanicum Trilogy by Uriel Orlow, including the films Imbizo Ka Mafavuke (2017, 28min), Muthi (2016-2017, 17min) and The crown against Mafavuke (2016, 18min), as part of a film programme that expands on the topics of the journey of seeds between the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and Lebanon, patent battles over traditional plant medicine in South Africa and the traces of colonial ambitions of explorers in the Natural History Museum Berlin. In the context of the three-day performative conference UNEXPECTED LESSONS #2, part of the festival Goethe Morph* Iceland at Nordic House in Reykjavik, September 13th – 15th, 2022.
Just like its predecessor event in Berlin and Nairobi, UNEXPECTED LESSONS #2 is dedicated to the theme of decolonization. This time we put a focus on nature, from different perspectives. What makes nature the other? What role does the decoupling of nature and culture play in this? Is the culture/nature dichotomy tenable at all? And how can we decolonize our view of the world and think nature differently?
Collection of contributions by artists, curators, designers, gardeners, farmers and organisations from various parts of the world, containing actual seeds, conceptual seeds, artworks, spells, instructions, videos and sound recordings. Curated by Borbála Soós, with works by Elena Agudio / Savvy Contemporary, James Bridle, Joélson Buggilla & Jorgge Menna Barreto, Sunoj D & Namrata Neog / Lakshmi Nivas, Sári Ember, Saskia Fischer, Oto Hudec, Areej Huinti, Zayaan Khan, Jumana Manna, Emma Nicolson / Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Elia Nurvista, Uriel Orlow, Martin Piaček, Tabita Rezaire, Sara Rodrigues & Rodrigo B. Camacho / Landra, Vivien Sansour / Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, Ai Wei Wei, Ayman Zedani, Amy Watson / Pool.
In this large-scale group exhibition, artists including Pipilotti Rist, Rashid Johnson, Maria Thereza Alves, Uriel Orlow, Jumana Manna, Taro Shinoda and Heather Phillipson interpret the motif of the garden as a metaphor for the state of the world and as a poetic expression to explore the complexities of our increasingly precarious world. Their artworks open up a wider discourse on social, political and ecological phenomena, such as migration, gentrification and gender politics. In addition to common understanding of the garden as a place of yearning full of meditative, spiritual and philosophical possibilities, the exhibition will tread the line between reality and fantasy, harmony and chaos, beauty and exile.