PLANT STORIES #2 Revolutionary Petunias. Roots Deep as Revolt
Workshop by Anguezomo Nzé Mba Bikoro with Abeni Asante
29 JUNE 2025 / 14:00–17:00
ZK/U BerlinSiemensstr. 27, 10551, Berlin, Germany
This workshop focuses on abolitionist herbalist practices and is based on a collective process in Z/KU's garden. Participants identify medicinal plants and create an archival zine-book. The session invites participants to learn about plant histories in revolutionary movements and Black anti-colonial feminist leaders and to reflect on queer botany and holistic practices with plants historically used in times of warfare, migration, disease and grief.
This session is curated and guided through embodied learning by Anguezomo Nzé Mba Bikoro and Abeni Asante. Participants are offered to become co-authors in the visual making of the zine and receive free copies of the collective production. We encourage participants to bring their own favourite texts on botany, visuals about plants and visuals about their historical lineages, which can be created into collage artworks. The session will include cyanotype printing, a technique to create blue-toned botanical images by placing plants on treated paper and exposing them to light.
*the title is in reference to the publication “Revolutionary Petunias” by Alice Walker and David Diop's poem “The Vultures”
BIPOC persons are particularly encouraged to join.
ANGUEZOMO NZÉ MBA BIKORO is a visual artist, writer, somatic body therapist, community cultural worker and curator supporting BIPOC and queer groups using integrative approaches that combines humanistic and abolitionist-inspired methods, de-traumatisation tools alongside cognitive behavioural therapy (notably for C-PTSD) and ancestral healing work. Their abolitionist approach is shaped through decolonial embodied practices and awareness of racism, discrimination and gender identity. Their practice honours queer histories and indigenous struggles centering Bakongo Cosmology, Obeah and Orixa practices that empowers communities and shares resources to create tools of safety towards self-awareness & transformation in mental health. Their works on herbalism and ancestral healing often exposes the interwoven colonial histories of migration and ecologies in site-specific spaces to dismantle prejudices and create independent emancipatory tools for liberation, education, and reparation.
ABENI ASANTE is rooted in movements of anti-colonialism and ecology. Their visual art centers african-futuristic and gender expansive perspectives on ecology. Abeni is based in Berlin, Germany and holds a masters in ecology and nature conservation. They are part of a Black group for land reparations in Germany and part of a collective building a residency space and forest garden near Cape Coast in Ghana. Building Black sustainable physical spaces is a part of Abeni's african-futuristic & abolitionist practice.