They didn't know we were seeds

*All proceeds from the SOLIDARITY WITH GAZA series will go to Gift of the Givers and other aid organisations offering humanitarian support in Gaza.

“They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds”

Was first uttered by poet Dinos Christianopoulous, for being ostracized from the Greek literary community in the 70s for being gay.

It’s become a slogan seen around the world on T-shirts and placards, and adopted as a chant of resistance for indigenous, Black Lives Matter, queer and Palestinian movements (amongst others). It is an intersectional battle cry for love and growth. It carries pain and hope in equal measure. The grief of having to bury those we love, and hope - but not hope without action, it’s what David Orr calls “hope with its shirt sleeves rolled up”, knowing that despite these horrors and this attempt to destroy us - we will regroup and regrow.

My friend Martha Chaves from Colombia 🇨🇴 taught me Indigenous Colombian chant: “we are not resisting, we are re-exisiting” (it sounds better in Spanish- ‘no estamos resistiendo estamos reexistiendo”)

It’s hard to face the reality of the children and families, crushed under rubble… buried under the tyranny of politicians and settler colonialism.

Yet at the same time, never has there been such conscious resistance and re-existence around the world in solidarity with Palestine, with the Congo, Sudan, DRC and any community suffering under tyrannical regimes.

It’s hard to face who and what has been buried under rubble, but we can not loose sight of what we still have power to grow, what roots we can grow to dive deep into our communities and what shoots we can grow together that will break through the hardest concrete rubble, and the most atrophied humanity… shoots will burst through and bloom.

Don’t underestimate your capacity for solidarity and adding to the battle cry. Dino wrote an 11 word poem, a seed that has germinated in movements across the world.

Tend to these seeds, especially the ones you sew with love and solidarity and let them take root in your heart.

Image inspired by E. Tönnires (1897) “vegetable people”

 Mixed-Media archival print

Hahnemühle Fibre Matte Paper

297mm x 420 mm

*Available for Pre-order