"Seeds of Growth" explores the ecological and cultural consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. Rather than treating war as a closed historical event, the project positions landscape as an active archive—one that carries traces of destruction, absence, and gradual recovery.

The work takes the pomegranate as its central material and symbolic agent. Historically cultivated across Karabakh, some pomegranate orchards were disrupted by occupation, land abandonment, and mine contamination. Today, the replanting of pomegranate trees by the Azerbaijani government marks a practical and symbolic return, signalling renewed cultivation and life within damaged territory.

The final outcome consists of three vertically aligned cotton panels forming a fragmented photographic image taken by myself in 2023 in Şuşa. The image depicts a ruined residential structure overlooking a barren landscape, referencing interrupted domestic life and long-term displacement. While the image remains consistent across all panels, each surface undergoes a different material treatment.

The photographic image is transferred using cyanotype, then deliberately destabilised through bleaching. Each panel is subsequently immersed in a different Azerbaijani pomegranate tannin—Gülöyşə, Şelli (originating from Karabakh), and Şah Nar—producing distinct tonal variations. These differences emerge not from the image itself, but from material and process.

Referencing the narrow, vertical format of traditional Shusha carpets, the work situates textile as a carrier of memory, labour, and place. "Seeds of Growth" reflects on restoration as a slow, uneven process rooted in land.