Reluctant Gardener. Installation view at Culturgest, Fidelidade Arte (2025). Photos: Vera Marmelo and Bruno Lopes. Courtesy of Culturgest, Fundação Caixa Geral de Depósitos.
of colonialism, and the fragility of the earth.
Reluctant Gardener contributes to these conversations by reflecting on nature as lived experience, constantly re-created and co-constructed through embodied and subtle interactions. The garden serves not as a reference to, but as an expression—both experiential and performative—of ecology. In the quiet turning of its seasons, this unfolding exhibition reveals the intensities of time’s passage through visual, auditory, and olfactory images, offering moods that resonate with today’s ecopolitical challenges.
Amidst the tides of resurgent nationalism, the figure of the ‘reluctant gardener’ persistently reconfigures our origin stories, questioning which worlds we cultivate and which natures we preserve, while revitalising how we perceive their rhythms and syncopations, much like gardens do.