Rethinking belonging through the University of Cincinnati Garden of Refuge initiative

Rethinking belonging through the University of Cincinnati Garden of Refuge initiative

Graduate student explores migration, care and identity through art and research

At the University of Cincinnati, the Garden of Refuge brings together art, environmental practice and community engagement to explore global challenges such as migration and climate change.

Through this initiative, graduate student Fatemeh Rezaei examines how spaces can foster belonging, using photography and video to connect personal experience with broader social and ecological systems.

The Garden of Refuge at the University of Cincinnati is part of a broader initiative responding to the interconnected challenges of forced migration and climate change through art, environmental practices and community. It offers a powerful example of shared practices that shape the environment and the way we live, connect and belong.

These ideas were explored during the recent Garden of Refuge symposium, which brought together speakers and participants from across universities, regions and international contexts. At the center of this reflection is Fatemeh Rezaei, the inaugural Garden of Refuge Graduate Fellow.

As part of her fellowship, she has been documenting the garden through a series of photographic works that isolate individual plants against a black background. Removed from context, each plant becomes more visible, more present, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be seen, to exist and to belong within a system.

Her work, along with her video "Rooted in Between," presented during the symposium, approaches artistic practice as a form of research, one that connects personal history to broader social, ecological and political structures.

What follows is a conversation with Fatemeh, where these ideas unfold through her own words.

Carolina De Salvo: Your work is deeply connected to themes like migration, community and belonging. In your own words, how did your personal story shape the way you documented the Garden of Refuge?

Fatemeh Rezaei: My personal story is inseparable from the way I documented the Garden(s) of Refuge. I know forced migration through my own experience. I know what it means to leave a place, to arrive somewhere new, and to spend a long time not fully knowing where you belong. When you carry that with you, you stop looking at spaces the way a visitor does. You begin to notice where people feel safe, where they feel recognized, and where they have found a way to stay. So when I came to the gardens both in Dortmund and Cincinnati, I saw them as spaces that acknowledge the presence of migrants. That distinction matters to me, especially now, when that presence is so often questioned, politicized or pushed out of view.

I chose to photograph the plants against a black background because I wanted their presence to be impossible to ignore. The plants became a way of speaking about that experience without reducing it to explanation.

Carolina De Salvo: You've been involved with the Garden of Refuge in both TU Dortmund and UC Cincinnati. How would you compare the two spaces, and what did you learn from experiencing this project in different cultural contexts?

Fatemeh Rezaei: Being involved in the project from the beginning and witnessing the development of both gardens helped me understand it in a much deeper way. The two gardens are different in scale, climate, surroundings and in the communities connected to them, so of course each one has its own character. But in both places, I saw the same commitment to care, connection and creating a space where people can gather, spend time and reflect.

Each garden responded to its own environment and community, but both created a connection across distance. That experience changed the way I think about belonging. I began to understand it less as something fixed and more as something built slowly through care, attention and the relationships people form with a place and with one another.

Carolina De Salvo: How do you see the Garden of Refuge connecting to women's experiences and stories?

Fatemeh Rezaei: I do not see the Garden(s) of Refuge only as a shared green space. I also see it as a space that helps us think about the kinds of labor and care that often shape women's lives but are rarely given enough attention. A garden does not exist on its own. It needs ongoing work, patience, maintenance and collective care. That part feels important to me, because women's lives are also often shaped by this kind of labor, the labor of holding things together, sustaining life and creating continuity, even under difficult conditions.

I also connect the garden to women's experiences through the question of belonging. For many women, especially migrant and refugee women, belonging is not something given easily. It is something made through everyday acts of building routine, creating safety, caring for others and finding ways to remain present in a world that often makes them invisible. In that sense, the garden holds questions of survival, care and the effort to make life possible.

These ideas were echoed in the symposium's panel on university campus gardens, moderated by Kate Bonansinga, director of the School of Art at DAAP, whose work bridges contemporary art, public space and cultural engagement. Read more about the symposium news here.

In this context, the Garden of Refuge is not just a place. It is a system of care, shaped by movement, sustained through relationships and continuously redefined by those who pass through it.

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Article and interview conducted and written by Carolina De Salvo.

Featured image at top plant of the Garden of Refuge by Fatemah Rezaei.
Photos/Kevin Bolanos Gonzalez

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