Mothering Beyond the Flesh: ecology, creative practice and maternal subjectivity in landscapes of the Anthropocene.

Since the 1960's, the natural and cultural heritage of Lanzarote has been shaped by native Environmental artist Cesar Manrique (b.1919, d.1993) who employed creative practice as an
intervention with the landscape to draw attention to the islands unique environment, contributing to its protected status as a UNESCO world heritage site. Through this lens, my PhD will question the relationship between artistic, ecological and maternal practice by investigating a garden of indigenous plants and an abandoned reforestation project in the north of the island. Employing creative practice as a methodology for generating new knowledge about the experience of mothering within landscapes of the Anthropocene, these gardens will become the site of a social mediation between a lost ecology and an imaginary future. Through this practice-based research I aim to question and establish links between creativity, mothering and ecology, whilst addressing the imperative of re-wilding the landscape.