Forest Notebooks, forms part of ‘Black Echologies’, a series of practice-based notebooks produced by Chimurenga in collaboration with Nyabinghi Lab to challenge mainstream ecological discourse—its coloniality and exclusion of indigenous knowledge. Through this series, we invite thinkers, artists and communities to share intuitions, visions and reflections from their own land, air, or water-based practice.
“How could my art, born from an intimate engagement with ecology, exist within a system that so often exploits the very land it depends on? This tension is unresolved, a friction I carry with me… Forest Notebooks is not an escape from these questions but a confrontation with them. It is an attempt to transcend the traditional boundaries of art and knowledge production, to forge a practice that contributes to human development, empowerment, and ecological consciousness. The forest taught me that growth is not linear, that belonging is not ownership, and that true creativity emerges not in isolation but in reciprocity.” — Mario Lewis, “The forest as teacher” from Forest Notebooks.
Mario Lewis is an artist and educator based in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago. His current work centres on agricultural sustainability, agroforestry, methods which focus on returning the land to its natural state, and on exploring opportunities through the Forest Notebooks International Residency—an artist exchange program.
To purchase the Chimurenganyana: Forest Notebooks head to our online shop or visit Chimurenga Factory at 157 Victoria Road, Woodstock, Cape Town.
This article and other work by Chimurenga are produced through the kind support of our readers. Please visit our donation page to support our work.