Amanny Ahmad, Butterfly Gaza sticker

Amanny Ahmad, Butterfly Gaza sticker

8cm wide x 4.2cm high

Vinyl weatherproof hologram sticker

Amanny Ahmad is a Palestinian artist, cook, herbalist, writer, and fellaha. In her research-based practice, she studies whole systems design, food as language, land as life, relationships between humans and non-humans, botany, mycology, indigenous culinary traditions and plant use, histories of resistance, and how those things can teach us about preservation, survival, and world-making.

-Proceeds from these stickers go to support the Palestinian Plant Archive-

@palestinian_plant_archive is a research project based in the West Bank that gathers, organizes, and transmutes knowledge around ethnobotanical relationships within the context of Palestine. The PPA is rooted in ideas around food, health, and land based sovereignty, principles that align with our identity as fellahin – the land working or “peasant” class of Palestine. Previously accounting for a vast majority of the population of Palestine pre-1948, our fellahin ancestors held knowledge about every aspect of living on and with the land and all the species it held. Ongoing conditions of zionist settler colonialism, extractive capitalism, ecocide, land-degradation, western imperialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing and all forms of dispossession have led to environmental and social dysbiosis that threatens all forms of life, as well as an ongoing existential threat to the wealth of knowledge that was previously passed down through generations of fellahin and bedouin. 

Herbalism is the practice of working with plants and their substances for healing and supporting health, and is traditionally a resource made for and by the people in every culture; Levantine Herbalism, one subset of indigenous Palestinian ethnobotanical knowledge, has a long and influential history and is a main focus of the PPA due to its utility in community and individual care. It is of utmost urgency to safeguard this and other vital historical, cultural, and scientific knowledge, while also making the information usable, accessible, and interactive. The PPA hopes to serve the people of Palestine in continuing on their well-worn path of steadfastness, self-reliance, and resistance by modeling a methodology of practical resilience that can be replicated by other communities for their own reclamation and rehabilitation efforts with the ecologies they are in relationship with.

- Palestinian Plant Archive

Further writing by Amanny can be found here Freekeh and Fellahin: A Symbiotic Relationship of Sumud + Back Home Substack +