Meech Boakye: Sunstead

Active Cultures invites you to Sunstead, an artist-led evening celebrating the longest day of the year.

Conceived by Portland-based artist Meech Boakye, this year’s gathering centers fortune telling and meditative offerings to mark the transition into summer. The picnic will feature non-native ingredients often labeled “invasive,” inviting reflection on the political and cultural histories embedded in how plants, and humans, are inherently categorized.

Meech Boakye’s research examines foraging as a cultural practice increasingly restricted by private property, land access, and ideas of ecological purity. Through work with non-native plant species, wild yeast cultivation, and biomaterial experimentation, the project connects conversations around conservation in Portland and Los Angeles to broader questions of migration, adaptation, and belonging. Rather than treating “invasive” plants as inherently harmful, Sunstead considers how these ecologies emerge through human histories of trade, displacement, and cultivation.

Sunstead is hosted in partnership with the Audubon Center at Debs Park. The picnic will feature a light meal, performance, participatory actions, as well as artist-designed picnic blankets for seating on the ground. Accessibility accommodations for seating will be made by request.

Active Cultures has produced projects with Meech Boakye since 2022, beginning with their ongoing Research Poems and watering (2024).