GUARDIANS OF SEED, LAND AND LIFE :: THE SEED RESEARCH JOURNEY OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN RURAL WOMEN’S ASSEMBLY
A Photo-documentary Exhibition
Exhibition showing: 5 – 20 August 2024
Exhibition opening launch date: 7 August 2024
Location: UJ ARTS GALLERY, Kingsway Campus, Corner of Kingsway Ave and University Rd, Auckland Park, University of Johannesburg
The photo-documentary exhibition Guardians of Seed, Land, and Life: The Seed Research Journey of the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly tells the ‘herstories’ of rural women seed guardians in seven SADC countries: eSwatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The exhibition gives visibility and recognition to the seed guardians. It shows where they come from and how they sustain life, their families, communities, and the planet. The photographs, texts and supporting elements depict a dynamic context and a pluri-dimensional background, challenging the usual portrayal of a rural woman who is helpless and poverty-stricken. The pride of the seed guardian is evident when she tells her story of how protecting the traditional seeds has helped her to feed and send her children to school, build her home and become economically self-reliant.
The exhibition celebrates the quiet and silent activism of the RWA seed guardians and the seeds they hold. Each individual act of the seed guardian becomes a collective wave of solidarity across the region.
The seed guardians and the seeds themselves tell multiple and often overlapping stories: endurance and resilience; struggles for land; complex social relations and patriarchy in rural areas; gender-based violence; migration, labour patterns and social discord; climate change; rural food systems and work that provides, feeds and nurtures local livelihoods. In many ways, the seed embodies the struggle for freedom, autonomy and sovereignty of rural women, small-scale farmers and peasant producers. It is a testimony to the unseen daily work being done by RWA and their significant contribution to ensuring and enhancing biodiversity, social reproduction and rural economies.
The photo-documentary exhibition is a collaborative project between the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA), the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, the University of Cape Town’s EthicsLab, and the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies of the University of Johannesburg. The travelling exhibition was launched in Geneva, Switzerland in 2023 and then moved to The Hague, in The Netherlands. It is currently showing outdoors at the Tropical Botanical Gardin in Paris’ Bois de Vincennes, France.
The team in charge of the research, design and production of the exhibition consists of three activist scholars:
Dr Daniel Chavez: Coordinator of the GreenPaths Project at the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI) and is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg.
Dr Donna Andrews: Senior Researcher at The EthicsLab, University of Cape Town, and a former Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg (2020-2023).
Dr Suzall Timm: Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies of the University of Johannesburg.
The digital version of the exhibition is available online at <https://www.seeds-savers.org/the-exhibition>.