Press Release
The Fogo Island Gallery presents Wild Relatives (2018), a feature-
Jumana Manna, Wild Relatives
Fogo Island Gallery, Fogo Island (Canada)
23.12.2018 - 27.04.2019
In 2012, an agricultural research centre in Aleppo was forced to relocate to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon due to the escalating war in Syria. Unable to move its gene bank, the centre, known as ICARDA, created a duplicate by withdrawing their back up seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway and painstakingly re-
Wild Relatives subtly infers the backdrop of international policies and practices from the 1960s on that facilitated a move towards industrialized farming in developing countries, one that privileged high yielding crops over local wild varieties, and in many cases has placed farmers in subservience to state or corporate interests.
The film also foregrounds the lives and livelihoods of individuals, from the young Syrian refugee women who work in the fields to local farmers who have been forced to transform their arable land into more economically viable refugee camps, to those pursuing alternatives, “ground-
Wild Relatives grew out of Manna’s interest in archives and, in particular, taxonomic approaches to nature that have “accelerated material and social changes to the life cycles of plants and their allies, small farmers.” [1] Prevalent in the 19th century, such methods were ostensibly an imposition of colonial mechanisms of control over the “unruly” landscapes and flora of the Middle East. They are the precursor to contemporary gene banks and, as Shela Sheikh has noted, also facilitated the extraction and transfer of plant resources to the West. [2]
Manna explores the dual nature of the archive as a mechanism of preservation that may also precipitate erasure: a "fixing" or freezing in time of a particular body of knowledge or, in this case, collection of seeds placed into a state of limbo. Despite many significant developments made with the goals of alleviating poverty and hunger, the pursuit of high yielding seeds in the work of organizations like the ones featured in the film has also resulted in a diminishment of biodiversity.
A timely and important work, Wild Relatives offers no easy answers but opens a field of inquiry into the entanglement of the Syrian crisis, the impacts of various agricultural histories and practices, as well as the movement of people, resources and capital across national boundaries.
[1] Jumana Manna, “A Small, Big Thing,” in Wild Relatives (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2017), 50.
[2] Shela Sheikh, “Planting Seeds/The Fires of War,” in Wild Relatives, 26.
The Fogo Island Gallery is curated by Alexandra McIntosh (FIA Director of Programs and Exhibitions) and Nicolaus Schafhausen (FIA Strategic Director).
Artist’s biography
Jumana Manna is an artist working primarily with film and sculpture. Her work explores how p5); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015); SculptureCenter, New York (2014); and Kunsthall Oslo (2013). She has participated in group exhibitions such as Centre Pompidou and Satellite 10, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2017); Nordic Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale (2016); Kunsthalle Wien (2016); Liverpool Biennial (2016), Marrakech Biennale 6 (2016); 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016); and Jerusalem Show VII and VIII, Al-
About Fogo Island Arts
Fogo Island Arts is a residency-
Exhibition December 23, 2018 -
Jumana Manna, Wild Relatives, 2018. Film still, courtesy the artist. Photography: Marte Vold
© ArtCatalyse International / Marika Prévosto 2019. All Rights Reserved