Seedbanks
Deep inside a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, lies the Global Seed Vault. It is a ‘fail-safe’ seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time — and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters. The Seed Vault represents the world’s largest collection of crop diversity.
Yet, the threat of a recent permafrost melt due to rising temperatures, or the mundane malfunction of a poorly functioning freezer shows as that the ‘safest place on earth’, is vulnerable. And the loss of crop variety is as irreversible as the extinction of any form of life.
My Gold Seed Vault Plantable Painting* has been included among the artists represented at Svalbard since 2017.
https://www.seedcultures.com/#/navarro/
*24K gold leaf covers a curated selection of native seeds, so when the painting is planted in the ground and given water and light, seedlings will burst through the gold.