Indigenous knowledge and contemporary expression

In this long-term, process oriented and collaborative project that unfolded across various sites in South Africa, visual artist Dunja Herzog (Switzerland) and beekeeper Thembalezwe Mntambo (South Africa), explore the relationship between bees, plants and humans.

‘Hiving and HUMing’ foregrounds bees’ vital ecological function, methods of communication, spiritual significance, knowledge, rituals and modes of sensing. Together with a swarm of collaborators – local and international beekeepers, gardeners, artists and academics – they researched and cross-pollinated ideas about indigenous and non-extractive approaches to beekeeping and beehive modalities, as well as non-verbal forms of communication between species and resonant instruments tuned to the vibratory frequency of bees.

Supported by a Co-creation grant, ‘Hiving and HUMing’ was conceived as the next chapter of the artists’ collaboration which began during Dunja’s 2022 residency in Johannesburg and culminated in the exhibition ‘HUM’– an installation of layered soundscapes and terracotta clay beehive sculptures.

The artists extended their alternate hive modality research through an immersive process of co-creation in understanding grass as an age-old material to make beehives. Drawing on the tradition of skep hive making, Dunja and Thembalezwe began developing beehives and woven sculptural forms of their own using indigenous South African grasses and in dialogue with master weavers in Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal. This led them into the world of plants and encounters with different types of indigenous plant specialists and beekeepers. The project’s first public moment in March 2024 incorporated these elements into a two-day programme comprising a beehive making workshop using sustainable materials to support bees, and a talks programme delving into alternative approaches to apiculture and horticulture and an archaeoacoustic journey.

In the realm of sound, the artists were interested in understanding how vibration and sound waves are sensed and how bee’s non-verbal communication can inform the creation of instruments. Concepts of call and response, repetition and feedback are ancient practices of communication triggering muscle memory, ritualistic and rhythmic acts that connect us across time and species.

Dunja and Thembalezwe explain that the project ‘invites us to strengthen our kinship and renew sensitivities to the natural world through listening, observing, feeling and through acts of solidarity, in doing so we aim to demonstrate our interconnectedness and catalyse a continuum of eco-systemic symbiosis.’

The project culminated in March 2025 with a multidisciplinary and multisensory collaborative exhibition and performances exploring interspecies dialogue and knowledge exchange through sound, dance, music and sculptures. One of the collaborating artists, Ntomb’Yelanga, reflected on this reciprocation: ‘My work began with bees — their hums, their purpose, their resonance. Then came water, its deep flowing tones mirroring that same life-giving energy. I heard the elements — bees, water, trees — in rhythmic conversation. That dialogue shaped my instruments: a tribute to the elemental language of nature.’

To dive deeper into this project and swarm of collaborators, read the full story here.

For Swiss Daniel Hellmann and Brazilian Rafa Bqueer ‘De-Domestication’ is a term that describes an attitude and a practice: the liberation from social, cultural, and bodily domestications. It’s no coincide that it also serves as the title of their collaborative piece, a work looking into raising awareness about nature and ecology from a queer perspective, drawing on their cultural backgrounds. 

The artists met in 2023, when Rafa worked as a mentor for Daniel’s residency in Brazil – a research focused on cattle-driven deforestation. Soon, they connected their investigations and their drag personas, a cow from the Alps (Soya the Cow) and a jaguar from the Amazon (Uhura Bqueer), unfolding into a new project supported by a Co-creation grant. Together, they travelled to the Brazilian Amazon and the Swiss Alps, two distinct landscapes threatened by the climate crisis and the expansive logic of agribusiness, laying the groundwork for ‘De-Domestication’ (‘Dedomesticação’ in its Portuguese version).

Conceived as both a theatre performance and a film, the project stages an encounter between these drags in a world that has fallen out of balance. Amid monocultures, cattle breeding, and colonial violence, the stage becomes a projection surface for rewilding and resistance. The two artists draw on different knowledge and landscapes to create a multimedia, ritual show that discusses global connections between agriculture, racism, and ecocide. 

‘De-Domestication’ is proposed as a gesture of poetic and political liberation, dismantling boundaries between species and exploring the body as a territory of resistance, desire, and reinvention. They do so by bringing together drag, queer cosmologies, and decolonial thought; by travelling between the pop cow and the sacred jaguar (a symbol of strength and resistance among distinct Amazonian cultures), between ritual and protest.

‘We often asked ourselves whether we still have hope – for jaguars, cattle, Indigenous people, Black, trans, or queer individuals, for the climate. The idea of a complete “de-domestication” seems hardly attainable in a world where norms are deeply inscribed in our bodies. Thus, although Uhura carries a decolonial attitude, she still speaks the language of the colonizers, and our Brazilian film team in the Amazon ate the food of the colonizers – meat, which is at the same time a main cause of destruction. These contradictions were always present,’ Daniel explains. 

The performance premiered in September 2026 at Tanzhaus Zürich (Switzerland), and the film had its avant-premiere shortly after at Sesc Ver-o-Peso in Belém (Brazil), as parallel event to the UN Climate Conference COP30. The duo is planning further tours of the show, as well as screenings of the film.

Paloma Ayala’s work highlights how farming is not only a means of producing food but also a way of knowing the land: understanding soil, seasons, and environmental change through experience passed down across generations. By focusing on her family’s history as agricultural workers along the Mexico–US border, she foregrounds ecological knowledge as relational and community-based.

The video ‘Que no me quiten ni la lengua ni las patas’ patas (‚Take anything but our tongues and feet) draws attention to how colonial and neoliberal systems disrupt traditional ecological practices and degrade soil.

The project was showcased under the theme ‚Rizq | Risk‘ at Karachi Biennale 2024 where artists examined how climate change, uncertainty, and colonial power structures shape livelihoods and deepen global food insecurity. Through this work, Paloma Ayala interprets ecology as political and historical, linking local struggles to global structures of power.

Central to the project also is care for humans. Paloma Ayala’s work is consequently a careful balance of proximity and distance, ‚I try to stay very close to home, close to my own story and the stories of the places and beings that I love and portray in any of the works I do,‘ says the artist, adding, ‚I am very careful of how I use images of my own uncles, aunts, my dad, or grandparents. I love them. I feel a huge wish to protect them. I think that distance is important in order to both create links of solidarity and to create artworks that make sense in a non-extractive way.‘

Read more in an interview with Paloma Ayala during Karachi Biennale 2024.