Natalie Blom
Natalie is an architect, artist and researcher based in Stockholm. Her work seeks to engage with contemporary socio-ecological challenges through exploring ideas around co-existence and messy togetherness. She is interested in artistic and architectural strategies which cultivates care and intimacy with local ecologies and in extension - human relationships.
Her practice includes artistic and architectural research and design, performance design, food event design, and curating and hosting workshops.
Natalie is a co-founder of Garden Loops; an international collective of architects and artists based between Gothenburg and Stockholm. Their practice explores local ecologies and food systems through a more-than-human lens. It is composed of Poppy Bell, Natalie Blom, Mercè Torres and Alexandra Papademetriou. Garden Loops uses workshops to facilitate open and shared learning and storytelling working to create collaborative networks and interdisciplinary dialogues.
Natalie holds a postmaster from the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where she participated in the program Of Public Interest (OPI) Lab 2023-2024.
natalie@be-bl.com
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03 The Ruderal Garden - Garden LoopsDOC 234—34/2
2024-05-14 - 2024-11-30
FärgfabrikenThe Ruderal Garden is a semi-wild, semi-cultivated landscape. It’s an artistic research project exploring the potential of ruderal plants – often seen as undesirable weeds – in strengthening ecosystems and decontaminating polluted cityscapes. The Ruderal Garden is run by Garden Loops – an art and architecture collective consisting of Alexandra Papademetriou, Mercè Torres, Natalie Blom and Poppy Bell in collaboration with Färgfabriken.
Ruderal plants inhabit environments usually considered inhospitable to human eyes – cracks in sidewalks, industrial sites, waste disposal areas – but are in fact rich and diverse ecosystems. In The Ruderal Garden, we explore the idea of the gardener as a multispecies actor (human, animal or plant) who cares for the Garden.
The project will take place at Färgfabriken, where we will build an exhibition garden which embeds our ideas and research on ruderal landscapes in public space. The garden will be built as a pilot project in 2024 and will evolve over the next two years. This garden will be open to the public and aims to engage and educate about ruderal landscapes.