Art in the Garden: Short film Screening: Wandering In Beauty

Join us for a Q&A and facilitated exercise reflecting on everyday encounters of Beauty with Wandering Beauty's filmmaker, Nadia Bongo, following the screening of the short film in the Greenhouse.

Wandering in Beauty is an experimental short about a woman who wanders in Prospect Park while she, along with a few people and things encountered, speaks about beauty. Because it partly informs her ideas of beauty, the woman also confronts her past. Filmaker: Nadia Bongo. Co-directed by Dylan Castagnette

Nadia Bongo is a teaching artist and translator. She holds a PhD in French Language and Literature from Aix-Marseille Universite. She has earned a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship and a Boston Writers of Color’s grant. Her writing and/or photographs have appeared in Apex, African Voices, Litro online, Solstice, The Citron Review, Taos journal of Poetry, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere. In 2023, Nadia co-directed an experimental short film with the support of the University Open Air program presented by Brooklyn Public Library.

Still from Nadia Bongo's Wandering in Beauty short film.

“Another thing we lost is culture. . . look at the word agriculture. We lost that connection. And so now it’s going back to the culture of agriculture. Why do we grow the food that we do?” - Karen Washington

Why do we grow the foods we do? How is culture tied to our local foodways and agricultural systems? What stories of nourishment are you hungry to tell? What creative acts are you being called to digest? In this weekly series, explore various techniques and practices introduced by visiting artists who will lead us in expressing our relationship to food, agriculture, and the histories and stories that shape how we connect with our foodways.

Through various artmaking techniques like bookmaking, printmaking, collage, sculpture, natural-pigment making and painting, alternative photography processes, participants will create artwork that begins to answer the question: Where is the culture in our agricultural system?

Workshops are rain or shine. This workshop will take place indoors.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at [email protected].

Host or Publisher The Horticultural Society of New York