Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens

An ancient Mesopotamian tale tells us about how fertility goddess Ishtar’s passing into the underworld rendered the earth fruitless. Hearing the pleas of barren lands, the gods agreed to split Ishtar’s time between the underworld and overworld, giving us distinct seasons. Her devotees would say, “No one comes back from the underworld unmarked.” As winter ends, Ishtar rises to the surface of the earth each spring ever more powerful. 

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, SAVAC has been running a playful and experimental land-based initiative called Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens. Exploring tensions between the wild (feral) and the domestic (garden), we encourage participants from around the world to conjure up atypical spaces to grow flowers, fruits, vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants. The namesake of the Network, the goddess of fertility Ishtar (also known as: Lady of the Date Clusters, Inanna, Aphrodite, or Venus) compels us to think about how feral gardens are wrapped up in reproductive justice, climate care, and psychic resilience.

In what feels like catastrophic times, we delve deeper into the wisdom of Ishtar’s story to lend perspective amid overwhelming grief. This year, Ishtar’s ascents and descents from the overworld to the underworld resonate in deeper time, from seasons to epochs. We are in the midst of genocide, encroaching fascism, ongoing pandemic, and the warmest winter in recorded history. Drawing on practices of collective mourning, we ground ourselves in our connections to other human, animal, and plant life to find hope for the future.  

How will this work? 

This planting season we will be hosting a series of online and in-person events. Anyone can join these events, from anywhere in the world and all the events will be free! You don’t need a garden to participate. There will be variety of ways to engage throughout the coming months. We will be sending details about upcoming events through all our channels, including our website, instagram and newsletter!

Fermentation and Conversation with Haruko Okano

Saturday 2 November 2024 
401 Richmond St. W 

SAVAC is thrilled to host interdisciplinary artist Haruko Okano for a very special event in Toronto. Haruko’s decades-long practice spans performance, sculpture, installation, earth and community work. She combines her concerns for the environment with issues of cultural identity and human rights. This event includes a hands-on fermentation activity alongside a retrospective artist talk, culminating in a communal meal. 

In 1974, Haruko moved to the west coast traveling by foot and canoe through the northern parts of the provinces where she fell in love with the land Canada…not the government. Relationality with all living beings lies at the heart of her practice and life ethic as a third-generation diasporic person. The emphasis across all of her activities is on process, collaboration and integration. We will hear from Haruko about her unique approach to creating art, the food and medicine gardens she has tended since the 90s, and her journey to learn about and address the effects of intergenerational trauma within Japanese-Canadian communities and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The Humble Leaf as Cushion and Vessel

With Basil AlZeri and Nahla Tabbaa of Orraisse (قريص)
Saturday 27 July 2024

The Humble Leaf as Cushion and Vessel Recipes

Artists Basil AlZeri and Nahla Tabbaa of Orraisse (قريص) invite you to a culinary conversation and making session that unpacks their latest research and explorations around ‘invasive/unwanted weeds’ and seasonal plants carpeting rural and urban areas of Amman, Jordan, and West Asia. By rolling vine leaves together, an activity that embodies love and collective labour, Basil and Nahla will consider the humble leaf as a cushion and vessel. They will discuss challenges and opportunities around meaningful culinary performances and sacred ecology against the backdrop of grief, catastrophe, and famine currently engulfing their region. You are encouraged to bring a leaf and grain to roll during the event, and share your own recipes involving leaves from around the world.

Community Picnic 
Saturday, June 8, 2024
Christie Pits Park, Toronto

We’re inviting the SAVAC community to commune with the sun, eat some snacks, play some badminton, and be together. SAVAC is committed to creating spaces that hold our grief, rage and love for each other. As a part of Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens, the theme for this year’s community picnic is something to do with our hands when words don’t suffice. 

Whether it is the painstakingly peeled pomegranate when you have a tummy ache, that mysterious hand that enters the zoom screen with freshly sliced apples or pears, crates of alphonso mangoes obtained from the back of a mini-vans in shady suburban parking lots, or that passionfruit that helps you be with the ones lost along the way- nothing declares love like an offering of fruit. Fruits offer us a way to relate to one another and can transport us to other lands. Fruits can provide us with solace, connection, and a simple task with a beautiful reward at the end. We invite you to bring your favourite fruit to share with others.

When words don’t suffice, we gather, take out our feelings and knead dough, roll out our roti and naan, bake our manakeesh and taboon. For this year’s picnic, Palestine Bakeshop will be baking fresh flatbreads and pizzas in the Christie Pits wood-burning pizza oven.

Lamenting
Storytelling Series
June 10-July 1, 2024

Farida Rady, Dana Prieto, Dayananda Nagaraju and Mariam Magsi

We invited 4 artists to share how their relationships to the earth grounds them in times of grief. Whether it be tending to plants after losing a loved one, Lamenting the destruction of the environment, or holding the deep sorrow of witnessing genocide and rising fascism. Reflecting on seasons of grief, the growing cycle provides a pathway for making sense of the tangible and intangible aspects of loss. Tending to life is to tend to death. From sowing flowers beside tombs and planting trees to honour the dead, to using plants to detoxify soil and mitigate the climate crisis, to retreating to a quiet garden to mourn alongside birds. In times of grief, we return to our relationship to the earth in a myriad of ways. 

Sowing
Saturday, April 20, 11:00-12:30pm EST

As spring beckons new growth and cherry trees unfurl their pink skirts, we invite you to the launch of the 2024 Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens. This is an opportunity for new and returning participants to get to know each other. We will discuss various approaches to starting the growing season, relying on everyone’s knowledge and creativity to figure out how we might adapt and respond to drastic changes in growing conditions and worsening climate health.