Wild Patch is an ongoing collaborative project by curator Ligaya Salazar and artist Derek Tumala that situates ecological inquiry within a socially engaged artistic framework. Centred on the observation and gathering of wild or commonly overlooked plants, the project examines how ecological systems intersect with cultural narratives, migration, and identity. By focusing on species typically categorised as “weeds,” Wild Patch questions the cultural and institutional processes through which certain forms of life are classified as undesirable, invasive, or out of place.

The project unfolds through a series of participatory formats including foraging walks, workshops, reading groups, and communal meals. These activities function both as artistic gestures and as modes of collective learning, inviting participants to engage directly with local ecologies and vernacular knowledge. Through these encounters, Wild Patch foregrounds embodied and situated forms of knowledge production, situating artistic practice within processes of observation, gathering, and shared exchange.

Conceptually, Wild Patch mobilises the figure of the weed as a critical metaphor through which to reflect on structures of exclusion and belonging. The project draws parallels between ecological categorisation and social processes that mark certain bodies, identities, or communities as marginal or excessive. In doing so, the work proposes a speculative framework that reimagines “wildness” not as disorder but as a site of resilience, coexistence, and alternative forms of relationality between human and nonhuman life.

Wild Patch drawing by Derek Tumala

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