Many metaphors have been used to express the notion of relation: the rope that intertwines, the roots that brush against one another, the branches that spread in search of the Other. Among them all, the metaphor of the archipelago described by the writer Édouard Glissant is the one I prefer. Perhaps because he was born in the Caribbean, in Martinique—a crossroads and fusion of cultures that meet, mingle, and transform; perhaps because he is accustomed to looking at the sea separating the islands as something that unites and connects, rather than as an element that divides and isolates.

For Glissant, the archipelago implies movement, or better yet, errantry, because “to live and to write means to wander from one island to another, each of which becomes, in some way, our homeland^[1].” In his case, this is a physical errantry but also a metaphorical one, for it means imagining oneself within relation as the only possible way of being in the world: “it is only in relation with the other that I grow, changing without losing my essence. Every story refers to another and flows into another^[2].”

Glissant’s reflections seem particularly fitting to describe the artistic research of Asunción Molinos Gordo and the workshop she has been leading since October with ten farmers from the Bergamo area, as part of the biennial program Thinking Like a Mountain. Molinos Gordo is interested in community-based agricultural practices as virtuous means of reconciling with the Earth, and in the concept of seedship, borrowed from the English word kinship to express a romantic approach to seeds—one that highlights relationships, emotional bonds, shared histories, and a sense of belonging. Starting from these premises, the artist invited each participant to choose a seed and delve into its story, whether real and/or imaginary.

The aim is not to scientifically reconstruct the origins of the selected seeds, but rather to reflect on memory, to question absences, to observe the wandering trajectories and entanglements that the small or large odyssey of each seed traces among people near and far. Seeds thus emerge as identity symbols but also as cosmopolitan travelers, capable of condensing cultures, memories, and stories that are never individual but multiple, interconnected, and migrant.

To describe the creative process through which identities, cultures, and even the world itself are formed, Glissant speaks of creolization, inspired by Creole, born in the Caribbean from the encounter between the French dialects of slave owners and the languages of the enslaved. In the moments of sharing that have punctuated these months of research, participants often describe seeds as “time travelers that speak of a world that no longer exists,” and of lost communal bonds—using the words of one of them. But they also speak of rediscoveries, new affections, the birth of new relationships, and future. Within seeds, we could say, one can read ever-renewed and unexpected processes of creolization that interlace stories and shape identities.

The artist herself, with an unexpected and somewhat surprising gesture, decided to entrust each participant with one of her sculptures: a resin-sprouted seed, so that it might inhabit their homes and “migrate” from one to another between October and January, when the workshop will conclude. In this way, “her seed” becomes an activator of relations, welcomed in every island that composes the archipelago of the workshop, tracing trajectories that unite—and that embody, in a concentrated form of space and time, the millions of seeds that traverse history, geography, and humanity.

Sara Fumagalli

^[1] Living Means Migrating: Every Identity Is a Relation, Conversation between Claudio Magris and Édouard Glissant, last access December 12, 2025. https://www.corriere.it/cultura/09_ottobre_01/magris-dialoghi-glissant_c3667c46-ae5c-11de-b62d-00144f02aabc.shtml

^[2] Ibid.