Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, presents new work by art collectives Cooking Sections and Sakiya.
‘A fish from the river, a staff from the forest, a deer from the mountain’ (from Gaelic: breac à linne, slat à coille ‘s fiadh à fìreach) has long captured the fight against the enclosure of the commons. Through the lens of plants and the politics embedded in their spread, containment and conservation, this exhibition by art collectives Cooking Sections and Sakiya stems from the history of land struggles in Scotland and Palestine.
Looking at contemporary commoning strategies, the different projects undertaken by the artists forge new alliances between humans and more-than-humans across territories in flux. The installations, performances and materials in this exhibition challenge how botany has been used as a mechanism of control and how it might identify new horizons. From the banning of foraging practices to rewilding and wastelanding debates, this exhibition puts forward new ways of understanding and repositioning our bodies in relationship to our surroundings.
Supported by la Caixa Banking Foundation and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Image: Jose Cotto.
