• 14h30 Explanation of Ines Neto dos Santos’s work by Jessica Meuleman + tasting her kombucha
• 15h00 Eline de Clercq

Eline De Clercq opens the lecture with a brief explanation about Sawsan Gilboa, the national flower of Palestine, highly threatened by habitat loss, the Palestinian name, botanical name, taxonomy, and lack of protection. Followed by the presentation of the ecofeminist garden project at the Academy of Antwerp: from a cemetery with Franciscan monks to an English landscape garden to an ecological garden where students can learn from nature. A combination of the translation of the publication ‘The Sympoiesis Garden’ and the chronological evolution in the photos.

Eline concludes with a discussion about the objects she has brought from Mechels Broek.

What do you do when one day you realize there is no future for you? That was the question I struggled with during my studies when I was told there would be no place for my work in the visual arts. My teachers agreed that I have talent, and that my paintings are good, but as a woman, I should focus on raising children. More than that remark, it was the total lack of feedback on my work as if I didn’t exist. That day, I went to the botanical garden with the question ‘how does nature work?’, because in nature, I can learn what survival means, what is needed to grow and bloom, and how to find a place for myself in this world.

I am a painter, drawer, filmmaker, writer, teacher, and gardener. My practice is about diversity and the importance of representation. I am white, woman (an inclusive definition, ‘being a woman’ can be anything), and lesbian. I paint portraits of imaginary and existing people, my paintings show a ‘lesbian gaze’. My drawings are simple sketches that capture the essence of an image in a few lines. Together with Anne Reijniers, we made the short film ‘Gesamthof, A Lesbian Garden’. This film documents the art project that supports ecology in the old monastery garden between Morpho and Extra City. This garden project invites reflection on gender, communities, decolonization, climate, and intersectionality.

In 2022, I started the research project The Sympoiesis Garden at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, ‘sympoiesis’ means ‘making together’. Together with the students, we create a community garden, a more than human collective practice. With the help of ecofeminist thinkers Donna Haraway, Anna L. Tsing, Jamaica Kindcaid, and Ursula Le Guin, we translate theory into practice and restore ecology in the old garden of the Academy of Fine Arts. This garden brings new insights into how we as artists can make a difference in a multi-species world.

In this conversation, I will explain the ecofeminist project in the Academy garden and in the lesbian garden, and how we turn a lawn into a wild garden where plants can decide for themselves where they want to grow, and where insects, birds, and other gardeners are part of the garden collective.

- Eline De Clercq