Ecologies of Diversity: Plants, Art, Film was a year-long hybrid visual arts residency, held in-person at Gumchi Bagh in Tumair, Islamabad, in September 2024, and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland, in October 2024. Curated by filmmaker Sana Bilgrami, the project is a collaboration between Koel Gallery, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), and Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Arts and Creative Industries (ENU SACI), and is supported by British Council Pakistan.

Artist, Sara Aslam, was unanimously selected for the residency, from a large number of applicants, by a panel of reviewers. She has worked closely with Professor Kerstin Stutterheim, visual artist and filmmaker at ENU SACI, who mentored Sara in developing a diverse body of work that artistically and cinematically maps the indigenous and cultivated plant diversity at Gumchi Bagh.

The residency at Gumchi Bagh included a workshop at the farm with schoolgirls from Azm e Nau, a school in Tumair. The students collected and pressed plant samples and seeds from the grounds in Gumchi Bagh and learned about the significance of plant diversity. Sara and Kerstin also held a talk on biodiversity and Sara’s artistic research and practice with a group of students and faculty at National College of Art, Rawalpindi.

In Edinburgh, Sara’s residency included research in the extensive botanical collections, library and archive of RBGE, allowing her to draw connections between these collections and  the indigenous plants and seeds in Pakistan. Sara was particularly inspired by her discovery of a collection in the archives of beautiful botanical illustrations by an anonymous female 19th century artist in India. Sara’s visit coincided with a week-long ‘Plants on Paper’ workshop at RBGE supported by the Getty Foundation. The workshop, featuring talks and sessions with artists and curators, focused on botanical techniques, conservation and curation, and specifically on the decolonisation of collections of scientific prints and drawings.

The residency and exhibition have been steered in Pakistan by Project Consultant and owner of Koel Gallery, Noorjehan Bilgrami, herself an artist, curator and renowned textile designer. The project has also been supported in Edinburgh by Professor Olwen Grace, Deputy Director of Science (Collections) and Curator of the Herbarium at RBGE, whose research focuses on biodiversity in a changing world.

The project was enabled by the indispensable knowledge and support of Akmal, Akhlaq, Abid and Fida, at Gumchi Bagh, and by Azmeena Alladin, Gallery Manager, and Amadia Arif, Graphic Designer, at Koel Gallery.

The Ecologies of Diversity: Plants, Art, Film exhibitions take place at Koel Gallery, Karachi, from 6th to 24th May 2025, and at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, in the Science Building, from 6th June to 11th July 2025.