“ Why are certain species cultivated and celebrated, while certain human bodies are controlled and denied the right to move?”
One day, an unfamiliar flower appeared on my balcony in Berlin. Tracing the flower’s origin to the Middle Eastern coast, I began to ask how plants travel, adapt, and are welcomed across borders, while many humans from the same regions face increasing restrictions, surveillance, and exclusion. What seemed like a minor botanical event became the starting point for a broader artistic investigation into migration, climate change, biodiversity, and unequal systems of mobility.
This project explores flowers as living archives of colonial trade, ecological transformation, and social injustice. Botanical gardens offer a concentrated image of the world brought together in one place, yet their collections are rooted in histories of extraction, classification, and the movement of species through imperial networks. Flowers continue to circulate globally as commodities, luxury goods, and symbols of beauty, while also serving as critical ecological actors that sustain pollinators and urban biodiversity. The project asks: Why are certain species cultivated and celebrated, while certain human bodies are controlled and denied the right to move?
In the context of climate change, flowers become indicators of planetary transformation. Rising temperatures and shifting seasons alter flowering cycles, species distributions, and relationships between plants and pollinators. Urban gardens and balconies function as micro-ecosystems where these changes can be observed directly. Drawing on biodiversity research, postcolonial theory, and artistic practice, I aim to study how flowers reveal the entanglement of ecological resilience and political inequality.
The project is structured around three interconnected themes:
- Location-Based Climate Storytelling: Beginning from my balcony and Berlin’s botanical landscapes, the research uses local observation to uncover global histories of migration, colonialism, and environmental change.
- Planetary Connection: Flowers are understood as nodes in vast ecological and geopolitical networks linking soil, insects, humans, trade routes, and atmospheric systems.
- Future-Building: Through speculative design and immersive storytelling, the project imagines postcolonial gardens as spaces where ecological and social justice can be cultivated together.
This project grows from a personal reflection I once made while starting to work as an artist in Germany: “I hope one day I can talk about flowers without having to talk about racism.” Rather than separating these subjects, this research embraces their interconnection. Flowers become both biological beings and political witnesses, offering a way to think through borders, belonging, and coexistence. Through the New Practice Master programme, I want to develop this inquiry into a transdisciplinary artistic methodology that connects postcolonial critique, biodiversity, and climate futures to imagine more just and ecologically connected ways of living together.
Related Project Jardin D’Hivers
Potential collaboration with alotifarm e.V.
Botanical Garden Berlin
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Treffpunkt: der Vulkan