We are connected to the earth through the food that nourishes and heals us. Food sustains our health, and we, in our growing and harvesting of these foods, shape the health of the land. This new exhibition is part of Eden’s 2023–24 global food security theme and features work by Jonathan Baldock, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Maria Nepomuceno, Uriel Orlow and Nina Royle and Lucy Stein. It demonstrates how different communities across the globe honour a relationship with the earth through the practices that govern growing, harvesting, preparing, eating and sharing. The title, Acts of Gathering, is a nod to the physical act of gathering – harvesting – and people coming together in ritual and celebration. Our cultural relationship with food has changed dramatically over the last 100 years. Acts of Gathering invites people to consider how the emergence of customs and traditions in relation to food can enhance our connections to each other and the land. We need to feel connected to the land to care for, protect and restore it. The exhibition also calls into question the politics of food customs and traditions – asking why some are supported and others marginalised, and how they are affected by the globalisation and industrialisation of food and farming. The artworks on show explore
the materials, performances, songs and actions that embody community knowledge of the land. Acts of Gathering invites people to think about their connection to food and the land and consider what ritual and community mean to them. It also invites people to use their imaginations in navigating the artworks and ideas presented and to celebrate the power of the imagination to reunite us with each other and the land. Acts of Gathering features corn dollies, traditional weaving work,
repurposed plastic containers and painted murals. In varying ways, they each embody different communities’ interactions with food and celebrate how global and local forces shape these relationships. For example, corn dollies were traditionally made from the last sheaf of corn cut at harvest. The spirit of the corn was thought to inhabit the dolly once the field had been harvested, eventually being returned – in sacrifice – to the earth when the field was ready to be sown again. Historically, different counties in the UK have been associated with varying shapes of dollies, which took hundreds of different forms. In Jonathan Baldock’s work, corn dollies are reimagined in a blend of various designs and local vernaculars. Nina Royle and Lucy Stein’s work Crying the Neck includes objects that reflect both the celebration and mourning that accompany harvest and seasonal change, focusing on the relationship between the female body and the traditional act of ‘crying the neck’ – part of the Guldize festival, this is when the last sheaf of corn is cut and the end of the harvest is proclaimed. Serge Attuwkei Clottey’s audio
piece Better Days are Coming takes its title from the harvest festival Homowo celebrated by the Ga people of Ghana. It begins in August, ahead of the rainy season, with the planting of crops – predominantly maize and yam – and remembers the famine that once befell communities in pre-colonial Ghana. Today, the consequences of climate change are again causing poor crop yields, impacting both farmers and the communities they feed. The audio is surrounded by an installation made of repurposed yellow plastic Kufuor gallon cooking oil containers that are recycled to collect water or fuel. Learning from Artemisia by Uriel
Orlow is a work about Artemisia afra, a medicinal plant traditionally taken
as an infusion to prevent and treat malaria. Originally commissioned by the Lubumbashi Biennale, Democratic Republic of Congo, Orlow worked for several months with a women’s cooperative in Lumata, south of Lubumbashi, growing Artemisia afra. The work explores how the sustainable cultivation of Artemisia afra as a traditional medicine offers a way of caring for the health of people and land, creating pathways to non- extractive relationships with natural resources and community solidarity. All the pieces represent ideas
around communal ownership of food and land and how ‘commoning’ – the practice of collaborating and sharing to meet everyday needs – is enacted by different communities, often in a way that is simultaneously threatened and resilient. Cooperative growing, foraging and traditional harvesting create community-defined ways of relating to food, and each piece explores distinct cultural identities. But they all consider how connections between people, food and the land can be cultivated by shared beliefs and practices that are rooted in the earth. As part of the wider programming
for Acts of Gathering, Eden is working with CAST (Cornubian Arts & Science Trust) to present Jumana Manna’s featured-length film Foragers this autumn. Foragers depicts the dramas around foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine and Israel. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these traditional customs. We are also planning workshops and performances throughout the course of the exhibition, with further details to be announced.
Acts of Gathering was curated by Hannah Hooks and Misha Curson.
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