The Art Corner: Earthly conversations with Mirella Salame
From foraged pigments to using fungi in her paintings, Lebanese artist Fertile Palms creates art in collaboration with the Earth.
** Today’s art corner guest has chosen this tune for you to listen to as you read, enjoy.
In one of her essays, Audre Lorde, warrior, poet and feminist who died in November 30 years ago, wrote about self-care:
“I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Her wise words capture a concept that was popularised amongst feminists in the 70s that the personal is political, meaning that the personal experiences of women are rooted in their political situation and gender inequality. Though it is being published later, I write this piece on the 25th of November, a day that demands an international call to end systemic violence against women. Unfortunately, this year the discourse has been shadowed by the Thanksgiving celebration, and the — very necessary- criticisms against this “celebration”.
This month, I spoke to Lebanese multidisciplinary artist Mirella Salame, Fertile Palms, who called me from a blackout and reinforced my ideas that our personal choices are political and that much of what we do in private is reflected in the collective. Salame’s art is done in collaboration with the earth, a quick look at her Instagram will make you want to put your feet in the mud and get dirty. She reminds me of the soil, or its grounding power, and of the possibility of growth.
“When I was a child, I would go out—observing insects and flowers and climbing rocks. The whole day would fly and I wouldn’t even notice that I hadn’t eaten anything or, or that the day flew,” she tells me when I ask about a typical day in her childhood. What I love about her art is that she has brought that playfulness and awe into her adulthood and made it a political statement, even without necessarily wanting it to be that. “ I think my artwork is part of my belief. And part of everything I do is part of a healing process. Healing for me is also shedding or unlearning what doesn’t really belong to me, what has been imposed on me, and then relearning and reclaiming what is me.” And this is what is happening as a collective too, I add “Yes, being disconnected from nature, from our big Mother Earth. Being bombarded with consumerism and what feeds the capitalist-patriarchal system, which is also a system of suppression and abuse for both the earth and women in parallel.” My head nods as she speaks with a soothing and nurturing tone. Although Salame tells me she knows her art will not heal the world, nor does she want to take on this responsibility, she admits that her work is a political and spiritual choice.
“Healing for me is also shedding or unlearning what doesn’t really belong to me, what has been imposed on me, and then relearning and reclaiming what is me.”
Salame works in collaboration with the Earth, by foraging natural pigments and other natural elements, exploring the connection between her own body and emotions, and those of the earth, and retracing belonging. In some of her works focusing on the red ochre, she brings to attention parallels between the suppression & abuse of women and the suppression & abuse of the earth. I ask her about the process of foraging for her art “When I go, I first love to walk slowly, listening and letting the earth know I’m here. Whether I pick something or not is not my sole target.” Part of foraging her own material is also having a good relationship with the earth, and when she picks rocks, she never takes more than she needs. “Then I grind the rocks, I levitate them to separate the pigments from the rock parts, then that I put it under the sun, the water evaporates. And I’m left with the pigments. The process includes all elements and I love that. It teaches me a lot of patience.” She tells me that sometimes she combines the pigments with melted tree resin to make her own watercolours, and that her process is entirely intuitive. “I’m bringing knowledge from my ancestral line. I don’t know why I know this, but I know it.” Her approach is heart-centred and extremely loving… I ask her how she deals with the duality of her being, the reality of the world and the anger it can generate.
“I feel that on a personal level, anger can be valid. And we need to feel it, we need to sit with it and see what messages it’s carrying.” It needs to be heard, let out, “because anger can also be a force that drives us to do the ethical fights we do, or show us what needs to heal. But the way it’s channelled and the way it’s manifested is very important, it has to be conscious.” she tells me. I tell her about a recent essay I wrote about righteous rage and our fight to reclaim it. “For me, just being angry about the things that are happening is not enough. There has to be an alternative energy that fights this energy. You cannot fight fire with fire or anger with anger, there has to be hope, like the flowers in your garden,” she says pointing to a Bird of Paradise plant behind me “there has to be light in the dark, there has to be another kind of energy that could fight the issue just by existing.”
We begin speaking about how privilege plays into this mindset, that spiritual bypassing is extremely dangerous and that we must always be mindful of it. How do we tackle the enormity of grief when it comes to systemic issues, I ask? “ It’s really relative to each context and to each one’s privilege like you’re saying, but then I remember how, how plants grow differently in different environments, and offer relatively different kinds of medicine,” Salame also guides people to develop a relationship with plants that is heart-centred, meaning that it is not guided by a Greed to exploit the plants for its uses, but to develop a reciprocal relationship with plants. “We can spend our lives feeling stuck and overwhelmed and paralyzed by these huge and immense issues, and at the same time, we can look down at the soil, under our feet and around us in our own environment and say, How can I be useful right here? How can I tend to this grief? How can I be medicine to myself and others?”
I stop to think about this for a minute, and am reminded of the fact that we truly do have a choice, we can actively decide whether to exist as poison or as medicine.
Thank you for reading this month’s Art Corner! This is a monthly column, and a passion project made a reality by New Media Advocacy Project.
You can follow Salame’s work on her Instagram page
