Oct, 2026
How We Belong
Artist's Statement
Manuela de los Rios's practice is rooted in long-term collaborations with artists and communities aiming to demonstrate how socially engaged art can ignite collective imagination for regenerative placemaking. Through playful interventions, mostly unfolding in public or unexpected outdoor spaces, she creates situations where strangers can come together, creating opportunities for embodied connection, and the collective reclaiming of public spaces.
Working across installation, printmaking and performance, de los Rios draws on bold symbols, patterns and modular forms inspired by her Andalusian heritage and her interest in plants and people on the margins.
Rather than offering fixed solutions to ecological and social challenges, the artist offers audiences an opportunities to notice, reflect and reimagine their own relationship with place, plants and people.
This exhibition, How we belong, is about the generosity and resilience of nature, even in times of conflict or in heavily urbanised land, and how this can become a source of hope and life for humans and non-humans.
The artist has investigated the human stories behind wild plants the people and land of Dundee have in common with the people and land of Gaza, where foraging for edible plants has become a lifeline to survive the genocide. One of the artist's favourites is wild mallow (Malva sylvestris) known as khobiza in Palestine, which can be used like spinach. Other edibles like bitter vetch, sorrel, chamomile and oregano have also been casted into the artwork.
Hold on to the rain are handmade clay rain chains that redirect and collect rainwater, offering a way to store and reuse this water and avoid it overwhelming the city's sewage system. Access to safe and clean drinking water is a universal right but nearly 90 per cent of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed, restricting Palestinians' ability to collect and use rainwater for domestic or agricultural use.
Wild kokedamas and Hold on to the sun draw attention to local wild plants and weeds or garden escapes and to the sun as a free source of food and energy. Both are live pieces and will be affected by onsite humidity and sunlight, the artist invites passer-by's to observe the changes these pieces will go through over the course of the exhibition.
Polybiohonia is a collaborative sound collage/ walk through a contemporary Dundee, inhabited by the human and more-than-human. It is a playful call and response between musicians Lana Al Khateeb, Monica Madas and Inma Montero, and field recordings of local bees, birds, woodlice, bats, foxes, wind, water and soil.
Artist's Bio
Manuela de los Rios (b. 1975) is an artist and community organiser based in Dundee. She creates site-responsive installations and experiences to explore human ecology, urban rewilding and collective imagination.
Graduating from DJCAD in 2026 with an MFA in Fine Arts, her most recent work has been shown at collective exhibitions or performances at Meadowmill Project Space (Plants we Know), UoD Matthew Foyer Galleries (Etiquette) and LifeSpaces gallery (In/Out), V&A Juniper Auditorium (Ravel Unravel) and Generator Projects (HumaNature). Co-awarded Creative Dundee's Amps Community Fund in 2021 (Hilltown Plaza -- Tactical Urbanism) she was selected to attend the SPASA residency/training in Outdoor Arts Spain in 2025, and has been working alongside Room to Be this past year on Listen to the Lavender, through a miniresidency with the Arts and Nature Collective.
She is committed to integrating the arts with social and environmental work, serving on the boards of Transition Dundee, the Arts and Nature Collective and Articulation, Scotlands Outdoor Arts Association. She co-founded Grow Dundee and Dundee's Changemakers Hub and enjoys zine and print making and delivering creative workshops and talks to capture and spread situated knowledge and skills.
Artist's Links
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Next project: → Displaced People
Previous project: ← Nought From Nought
