Juliane Foronda ⎜Kreenholm garden (canada, scotland )

//BIO

Juliane Foronda (she/her) is a Filipina-Canadian artist, writer, and researcher whose work is concerned with notions of radical care, feminist hospitality, and traditions of gathering. Her practice is marked with an investment in the relationship between architecture/space and emotion, focusing on how domestic practices shape our understanding in cultural, societal and political ways. Working predominantly through object, intervention, and text, she’s influenced by (found and fabricated) structures, built environments, and hidden labour. Her work negotiates how these notions play with the tension between reality and possibility, truth and imagination, and knowing and not knowing. Juliane holds a BA in Studio Art from the University of Guelph (CA), and an MA in Fine Arts from Iceland University of the Arts/Listaháskóli Íslands (IS).

//PROJECT

My practice is invested in feminist hospitality, radical care, and traditions of gathering. I intend to focus on community-driven approaches to these notions in response to the unique opportunity to cultivate an environment dedicated to rituals of preservation at Kreenholm Gardens. I work a lot with the concept of preservation in my work in both a literal and conceptual capacity, actively working in archives with the intention of making them more accessible to the public. My past research in the Glasgow Women’s Library archives involved the etymology of words/phrases that I came across in the nutrition archives by unpacking their relation to feminist hospitality. For example, the term “preserve” has roots in late Latin (prae-servare), which loosely means to “keep safe from harm”, and shares linguistic roots with words like press, pressure, and serve. I would consider my proposed project to eventually function as a living archive of preservation for all those to come, and I am motivated at the possibility of my research-driven practice to unfold in a tangible and sustainable manner. I’d also do research about the specific plants I’d gather for the garden, keeping in mind their inherent properties and how they’ve been used around the world and their relation to preservation (apples for example, symbolise hope and prosperity, and lavender is often used for its calming properties).

In keeping with the ethos of NART’s Kreenholm Garden residency, my project will focus on the notion of preservation from a socio-cultural and feminist perspective. I’m interested in layering various time-taking food practices in this residency, starting from planting and tending to the garden, up until the preservation of its harvest as a means of demonstrating how considering foodways in their entirety have the power to preserve community and traditions, and how the garden has the potential to be a site for social change. My project has two main components: Develop and cultivate a preservation garden and host a preserves making gathering/workshop that culminates in a garden picnic.