Aunchalee, Erin, and Renee
Our stories, spanning three continents, begin in the desert.
A plant, curled like a closed hand, waits for rain.
Some call it the Hand of Mary—the rose of Jericho—
but its wisdom predates language, religion, and empire.
Aunchalee: I see in flora stories of suppressed bodies—
of women who once held this plant through labor and release,
who knew how to summon or still the tide of life.
Their knowledge of fertility, of abortion, of care,
was medicine long before it was named “science.”
Through these plants, I listen for the biocultural memory of reproduction—
for the songs that patriarchy silenced but could not erase.Renee: I follow flora across arid lands,
tracing resilience in each photosynthetic cell.
Botany was once deemed “safe” for women—
a gentle science, an acceptable pastime.
Yet in its quietness, rebellion took root.
Women observed what others overlooked:
the intelligence of roots, the agency of seeds,
the Earth’s capacity to heal herself and to initiate systemic shifts.Erin: My work begins where the wild returns.
In abandoned fields and feral gardens,
I film the gestures of reclamation—
hands planting herbs once forbidden,
bodies moving through the landscape as kin.
Art, for me, is a form of rewilding.
To make a film, to paint a flower,
is to remember how knowledge feels in the body entwined with the living Earth.All: Together, we speak to this lineage—
of women healers, artists, and scientists
who learned the world through petals and pigments.
In the unfurling of the rose of Jericho,
we see not just resurrection,
but resistance—
a reminder that regeneration begins from the ground up.
—Aunchalee, Erin, Renee,
and all the human and more-than-human companions
who have made Gaia Commons possible.
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