Zayaan Khan’s work as a seed librarian and horticulturist often seems fun and playful. As she talks to insects, sticks her hands in the dirt, and puts strange plants in her mouth at her workshops, it’s obvious she finds joy in what she does. But much of her practice revolves around the confrontation of a traumatic past. In South Africa, colonization and genocide have erased millennia of local food knowledge, leaving the country with a food system at odds with what the land can actually provide. Through sharing seeds and…
