Rooted Elsewhere: Plants as Storybearers
Workshop Rooted Elsewhere: Plants as Storybearers, organised by Amsab-ISH and Voem as part of Project Digidaar, online at the Digidaar virtual museum, 4 June 2026 (video, 56 min.) (Collection Amsab-ISH)
Just like us, plants carry history, memory, and ancestral wisdom. In this workshop, we will approach plants as companions – living presences that hold and transmit stories. What stories do wildflowers tell? What does the wheatgrass, the olive tree, or the vine? What healing properties do they carry, and what can they teach us about resilience, joy, forgiveness, anger, and death? Artists Chama Tahiri, Juliette Mourad and Elli Vassalou will share their respective practices around plants and facilitate a storytelling and writing workshop.
Juliette Mourad (presentation 00:04 - 00:12)
Juliette is an amateur herbalist and forager based in Belgium. Since 2019, they have been learning alongside older and experienced practitioners, deepening their relationship to local plants, land, and traditional knowledge. They are also the coordinator of Le Bouquet, a collective herbal garden north of Brussels. Through Kin Hands, Juliette explores ways of connecting to the land we inhabit through the senses, history, and everyday encounters with plants. Their workshops focus on the joyful discovery of the quotidian and the mundane, while Kin Hands also extends into domestic arts, collage, writing, and earth pigments.
Chama Tahiri Ivorra (presentation 00:12 - 00:23)
Chama Tahiri Ivorra is a cultural engineering consultant, entrepreneur, and freelance journalist. For over ten years, she has collaborated with Moroccan and international media outlets such as TelQuel, Zamane, L’Officiel, Contemporary And, and Diptyk, to which she has been a regular contributor since 2019. Through her work as a consultant and cultural manager, she supports artists, institutions, and cultural projects in Morocco and internationally. Since 2015, she has also produced concerts and supported artists in their development through her artistic agency, N.O.W. She teaches general culture, creative writing, and journalistic writing in the Inspire program at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Chama is also the co-founder of NIYA, a vegan restaurant and cultural hub in Casablanca.
Elli Vassalou (presentation 00:23 - 00:39)
Elli Vassalou is a Brussels-based transdisciplinary artist, architect, and researcher. Her work grows from lived experience, collective memory, and long-term collaborations with communities. Working across film, spatial design, movement, food, storytelling, ritual, and participatory ethnographic tools, she creates spaces for reflection, knowledge production, imagination and co-creation. In her recent work, she researches the imprint left on bodies, culture, and land by the movement of populations in the Eastern Mediterranean and former Ottoman regions. She examines the effects of nationalisms on our collective imagination and the possibilities for creating new spaces and modes of intercommunal coexistence. Some iterations of this research include the projects On Lost Love & Lost Land (Citylab Pianofabriek, VUB, Pilar Brussels, 2026), The Post Collective: Metaspora (DESTE Foundation, 2025, Kunst en Zwalm Biennale, 2025), and Some Dances Last Longer than Castles: Çiftetelli (Xarkis Festival, Dance House Nicosia 2024; The Green Corridor, Yellow Brick, Sophia Conference, Performing Space Conference, 2025).
