Gardens, Resistance and Resilience

Sandy is a research-led artist exploring ideas around mythmaking, ethnobotany, queer ecologies and community resistance. In their work with Glasgow Seed Library, Sandy is researching how particular plants can be used to remove, transfer, stabilise or destroy pollutants in soil, air, and water, in the slow process of phytoremediation.

They are inspired by this transformative attribute of plants, as well as by the belief held by 16th and 17th century alchemists that plants can be treated as a sort of organic ore. In this talk Sandy will be discussing the creation of clean air gardens as art intervention in the urban environment, growing and saving seed as a meaningful, day-to-day act of resistance.

Sandy Sigala is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh. The PhD’s working title is The Politics and Poiesis of Wastelands, and the project explores the ambiguous character of post-industrial “wasted” landscapes across Europe, affected by the Great Recession of 2007-9, as sites of resistance. Sandy works across different mediums, enjoys experimenting with materials and is currently fascinated by and engaged in creating site-specific interventions.