Decolonising Botany working group includes Taey Iohe (UK/Korea), Youngsook Choi (UK/Korea), Ayesha Keshani (UK), Helen Pritchard (UK), Tuan Mami (Vietnam), Laura Burns (UK) and Cian Dayrit (Philippines). Initiated by Breakwater (Taey Iohe & Youngsook Choi), we are a group of artist/researchers with a focus on challenging and complicating the colonial system of knowledge production around nature, science, ecology and migration. We bring our individual practices together at the intersection of art, activism and community building, to prioritise decolonial undoings and solidarity.

We have presented work at Liverpool Bienniale (2021), Tuan Mami’s “Immigrating Garden” at Documenta 15 (2022), Mosaic Rooms, London (2023).

Above: Decolonising Botany at Mosaic Rooms, Reading Room, invited by artist Marwa Arsanios as part of her exhibition exploring alternative visions for relations to land, ecology and collectivism. A listening session was hosted by Youngsook Choi, Laura Burns and Ayesha Keshani, including text from Taey Iaho, sound work by Cian Dayrit around the Bungkalan land movement in the Philippines, and palm oil plantation sound piece and text from Ayesha Keshani. Participants were invited into a collective embroidery practice and mode of listening. January 2023.

Above: “Refusing Oasis” group performance at Tuan Mami’s “Immigrating Garden”, Documenta 15 (2022)

Youngsook Choi, “Refusing Oasis”, Tuan Mami’s “Immigrating Garden”, Kassel Documenta 15, 2022. Photo:

Laura Burns, “Refusing Oasis”, Tuan Mami’s “Immigrating Garden”, Kassel Documenta 15, 2022. Photo:

Tuan Mami’s Seed Library at “Immigrating Garden” Kassel, Documenta 15, 2022.

Laura Burns, “Refusing Oasis”, Tuan Mami’s “Immigrating Garden”, Kassel Documenta 15, 2022. Photo:

Rewilding Knowledge - Cosmopolitics, Stone Womxn, Bluecarbon and Illegal Seeds, Liverpool Biennale, 2021.

This video is the recording of Decolonising Botany’s launch “Rewilding Knowledge - Cosmopolitics, Stone Womxn, Bluecarbon and Illegal Seeds” as part of the Liverpool Biennial public programme where the working members shared the seeding ideas and relevant practices. Content created by Decolonising Botany Working Group (Laura Burns, Youngsook Choi, Taey Iohe, Ayesha Keshani, Tuan Mami, Helen V. Pritchard) and Mama D Ujuaje.

Copyleft with a difference: this is a collective work under the terms of the CC4r.

Funded by Liverpool Biennial x a-n Artist Bursary

Images from the Forest of Bowland: Laura Burns, Collage: Taye Iohe.