Resilient Roots – Exhibition – Chelsea Physic Garden – 16th to 29th June 2025

Resilient Roots

A Pop-Up Exhibition at Chelsea Physic Garden

Resilient Roots: A Pop-Up Exhibition at Chelsea Physic Garden
Southern African Glasshouse, Chelsea Physic Garden
16 – 29 June 2025
Free with Garden admission

Step into a living archive through culture, creativity and memory at Resilient Roots, a unique temporary exhibition situated amongst the Southern African flora of Chelsea Physic Garden.

This powerful exhibition is the culmination of a two-year collaboration between the Anti-Apartheid Legacy Centre, Chelsea Physic Garden, and the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University.

During 2023 and 2024, we facilitated meetings between MA Visual Communication students in Graphic Design and Illustration with South African elders from the diaspora community in London. These took place at both at Chelsea Physic Garden and on campus at the university. Responding to the plants growing in the Garden’s newly renovated Southern African Glasshouse, students explored the structure of the plants, colonial legacies of collection, and the plants’ indigenous uses in health, healing, cuisine and ancestral traditions.

Our South African Elders Group generously shared their knowledge and experiences of medicinal and culinary uses, cultural and traditional symbolism and insights into their familial migration stories. These conversations enabled the students to approach the plants as more than biological specimens and stimuli for drawings, rather they came to understand the plants as living vessels of resilience, growth and cultural heritage.

The students also carried out research in London Metropolitan University’s Special Collections, whose Trades Union Congress Archive contains material about the Apartheid era in South Africa and the global Anti-Apartheid movement, offering further understanding of the socio-political context that played a part in the migration of people from South Africa to London.

These multiple layers of engagement shaped a rich creative process where visual storytelling became a means of honouring both botanical and political roots. We’re excited to invite you to visit the gardens and see these artistic and personal responses to the plants in situ.

The Resilient Roots installation showcases the work of five emerging visual artists, whose specialisms include illustration, graphic design and animation:

Sammy Davis Guaman, Declan Munro, Ada Murati, Rebecca Tosoni, and Tea Marie Sudland Thjømøe

Each artist presents a series of striking poster artworks that explore Southern African plants as symbols of resilience, healing, memory and cultural continuity. Displayed alongside the very plants they represent, the artworks invite visitors to reflect on the interwoven narratives of people, place and nature.

This exhibition honours the profound contributions of members of the South African diaspora in Britain, whose reflections on land, heritage, and healing reframed the Garden’s Southern African plant collection through the lens of lived experience and highlighting themes of resilience and survival. As Vusi Mathebula shared, “Without the roots and without the land, we wouldn’t call it home,” and Jenni Kirby reminded us, “Hope has brightened our darkest days—it’s more than wishful thinking.”

Come and discover how plants, stories, and shared histories take root in this powerful fusion of art, activism and ancestral knowledge.

Chelsea Physic Garden
66 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London SW3 4HS

Opening hours: Sunday – Friday, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM (last entry 4:30 PM)
Closed Saturdays

Plan your visit: chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/visit

With sincere thanks to:

Nthabiseng Faku-Juqula, Jenni Kirby, Theodora Mannie, Vusi Mathebula, Sara Mokone, Iris Mqotsi, Lindiwe Poswa and Maria Segwai.

and

The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery Players

To learn more about the Resilient Roots project, please visit our blog for a piece written by one of the artists, Declan Munro at https://antiapartheidlegacy.org.uk/resilientroots_declanmunro/