Wasteland Nursery

‘The desert was not made to be reduced to a grain of sand’.

Both the traditional colonial depictions of deserts as empty, barren ‘wastelands’ and more recent scientific and commercialised studies of their riches, as well as romanticised, idealised version of deserts as spiritual ‘heartlands’ have all become simplified tropes. 

I am interested in a multiplicity layered understanding of all these versions and intentionally redefining these with new meanings. Lands traditionally labeled ‘wastelands’ seemingly desolate, harsh and barren are incubators, not only of ecologies, microhabitats, microbes and seed banks but also of ideas and imagination. Boom and bust (wet & dry) desert seasons are evidence of adaptation of a myriad of species that are in torpor, waiting for the conditions that suit them best. Below the desert sands are whole civilisations, jewels and lives waiting fro their time to be birthed. These places are incubators of possibilities, hope, creativity and transformation.