In the proliferation of neo/colonial exploitation, how could we grieve for damaged forests, rivers, the ongoing intensified ecological loss and broken communities in symbiotic relationships with them? What alternative agencies and sensibilities shall we urge to instigate interspecies commemoration for the countless species and lives lost in the Anthropocene?
Youngsook Choi, whose practice has focused on ecological grief since 2020, holds the space Slow Sips with Earth, proposing the tea mix as a way to write embodied prayers for the Earth. This gathering creates a humble moment of grieving and geological temporality out of tea mixing, collective poetry writing and ceremonial sips. The selection and composition of tea mixes arrives from collective knowledge and narratives around various tea and herbal plants. Participants are welcome to bring their choice of ingredients related to their own ecological loss and grief.
This event is part of the engagement programme to accompany The Battle Over Mazepa exhibition by Mykola Ridnyi. The programme explores themes of memory, identity and migration.
About the artist
Youngsook Choi is a London-based artist and researcher with a PhD in human geography. Under the umbrella theme of political spirituality, her performances and multi-faceted installations explore intimate aesthetics of solidarity organising and collective healing. More recently, grief has been the focus of Youngsook's practice, posing collective grief as the process of socio-political autopsy around repetitive patterns of human tragedies and environmental loss. Not This Future (2020), commemorating the Essex 39 incident, and In Every Bite of the Emperor (2021-current), the ecological grief project that weaves transnational narratives of damaged ecosystems and broken communities, are in tandem with this inquiry. Various institutions support her works, among them Arts Catalyst, Barbican Centre, Coventry Biennial, FACT Liverpool, Heart of Glass, Liverpool Biennial, Up Projects, Arts Council England, ARKO Art Center, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) and British Council Malaysia.