Artist Residency in Porto Botanical Garden
“I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear?” When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.
As a human, I will die once more,
Reborn, I will with the angels soar.
And when I let my angel body go,
I shall be more than mortal mind can know.”
Rumi
I spent two weeks in residence at the University of Porto’s Botanical Garden and the Herbarium of the Museum of Natural History and Science (June 2024). This residency forms part of a long-term inquiry—now spanning over two decades—into gardens and botanical gardens as spaces where the essence of being may be encountered through deepened contact with nature and its cultural expressions. At the heart of this exploration lies a search for essence through communion with the living world and the “sowing of the verb” that botanical gardens uniquely allow.
The two weeks unfolded within a field of silence. I moved between the University of Porto Botanical Garden, the Museum of Biodiversity, and the MHNUP Herbarium , gradually sensing the project’s shape. It became clear that it needed to include the four kingdoms—Mineral, Plant, Animal, and Human—and their sacred interconnections.
During that time, I gathered stories and created an imaginary herbarium. I drew, filmed, photographed, and facilitated a workshop on the harmonious geometry of plants. My artistic process is one of immersion—allowing the place to guide me, and responding to what wishes to emerge.
The Botanical Garden is located on the grounds that once belonged to the grandparents of Sophia de Mello Breyner, the renowned Portuguese poet and writer. As a child, I read all her enchanting tales—The Forest, The Sea Girl, Orianne Fairy. Sophia spent her summers in this very garden, where her imagination took root. One of her most touching stories tells of a whale that came to die on Praia do Paraíso in the 1930s. She imagined that whale as part of her grandparents' house—a room of wonder. Years later, her vision came true: at the entrance of the museum, there it is—the whale, once stored in boxes, now returned to presence.
In my residency, I opened myself to what presented itself—to the whale, to the trees, to the plants—and began a quiet dialogue.
I think of this work as a kind of cultural herbarium: a space where plants are woven into collages that reflect the human condition—our histories, habits, and mythologies. These compositions explore the human civilizational journey, enriched and transformed through plant presence. In connecting human culture with plant essence, the work reaches toward a wild, virgin space that still lives at the heart of culture itself—a culture whose root meaning is to cultivate. The gesture is akin to ploughing the land, but here it is the ploughing of the verb—the spoken word that constructs and deconstructs civilizations. Through plants, this word is brought back to the body, to the mother, to Gaia—and from Gaia, to the Logos.
In these times of ecological rupture and cultural fragmentation, such work becomes increasingly vital. Nature is being deeply altered by human activity, and humanity itself is in a state of transformation and uncertainty.
But as Carl Jung reminds us, the goal is not always to solve the problem—some problems are unsolvable. Rather, what must change is the way we think about the world. This project proposes precisely that: a shift in cognition—toward a way of thinking that is rooted in experience, feeling, and speech in communion with Gaia and the Logos—with the Cosmos.
This is the proposal of a new form of cognition: a cognition of the heart. In many ways, art already lives in this realm. This work is part of that movement—rewilding culture, and ploughing the verb.
This work was supported by curator Paula Pinto and developed in partnership with the project Performing the Archive, through which I revisited and expanded upon material previously collected at the Kew Gardens Herbarium. Working within the Performing the Archive space allowed me to reflect on these images, consider new ways of exhibiting them alongside botanical specimens, and explore the integration of these with film footage from Kew.
This residency was also made possible with the generous support of Número Arte e Cultura, and of course, the Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Porto and the wonderful Dr Cristiana Costa Vieira, Curator (PO Herbarium) .
If you would like to see more documentation about this project, check the report available in Portugueese.