Shelley Etkin

Shelley Etkin ​is a transdisciplinary artist, educator, and gardener based in Berlin, Germany with roots in the US/Turtle Island and Israel/Palestine. She works at the intersections of art and ecology, engaging with relations between bodies and lands through place-based knowledges. Her work integrates practices from dance/somatics, herbal medicines, pedagogy, and intersectional queer feminist community organising. Shelley’s bodywork and earth-care practices are dedicated to expanding perception, communication, and connectivity particularly with the plant world. ‘Landing‘ as a process and movement forms the grounds for her methodology. Shelley stewards the ‘Garden as Studio‘ platform for artistic research at Ponderosa, an arts centre in the countryside nearby Berlin, Germany and co-facilitates the ‘Social Body Apothecary‘ with Siegmar Zacharias and Kitti Zsiga, combining herbalism and intercultural plant knowledge with somatic work to address questions of social transformation. Her other long-term collaborations include ‘School of Lost Knowledges‘ with Jared Gradinger and the community of Coquí in Colombia as well as ‘Witch Camp‘ with Aune Kallinen.

Shelley is a guest lecturer at the International Campus of Humboldt University Berlin and the Theater Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her artistic research has been supported by resources such as the Tanzpraxis Research Stipend of the Berlin Department for Culture and Europe (2020-2021), the Process Funds of Darstellende Künste, Research Funds of Fonds Darstellende Künste, and The Gwaertler Foundation. She holds an M.A. in Ecology and Contemporary Performance (Finland), a B.A. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in arts-based activism (USA), a Permaculture Design Certificate by Earth Activist Training (USA), and is a student of homeopathy.

Practice Statement

Embodiment is a process that echoes throughout all my practices, integrating dance/somatics, performance, gardening/permaculture/regenerative land care, pedagogy, decolonial intersectional queer feminist community organising, writing, curation, plant communication, herbalism, and hands-on bodywork. Whether gardening, touching, teaching, communicating, collaborating, or making medicine, the role of listening is the vital pulse through which all processes emerge. I facilitate engagement with bodies as gardens and gardens as bodies, expanding from individual to social/ecological layers. I approach plants as companions, allies, teachers, healers, and collaborators; through medicinal encounters plants can hold space for complexity, multiplicity, allyship across differences, and witnessing transformation. Pedagogical thinking is central to my work, informing how to cultivate environments for experiential learning. Through the methodology of landing, communication between bodies and place is constantly engaged with to serve processes of social-ecological regeneration. Throughout all my practices, complex and multiple relations between bodies and lands are central.

For more on the methodology of 'landing': https://shelleyetkin.com/words/landing-in-the-garden/

https://shelleyetkin.com/

Advisor: PhD and MFA