Wild Patch is a collaborative multi-site project put together by artist Derek Tumala and curator Ligaya Salazar. It explores the power and symbolism of weeds. Understood as an undesirable plant in the context of a planned garden and in agricultural farming, weeds thrive in conflict with societal preferences and productivity. This project highlights the act of othering in the pursuit of a manicured garden, mirroring that beauty and functionality can only exist only in a ‘normative’ and ‘morally right’ society. Through a series of hands-on workshops, film screenings and hybrid reading groups in two ecologically distinct ‘patches’ of earth, the project seeks to question the idea of weeds as ‘other’ both as a metaphor for queerness and diasporic communities in the global North. 

Wild Patch drawing by Derek Tumala

All images from Foraging Walk in La Union below by Gab Mejia.