Leela Keshav


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      Archive of Stolen Seeds
      Birdscript
      Field Guide to the Botanical Imaginary
      Hauntings from the Sixth Extinction
      Stone Asemics  
      Seed Storytellers
      The Specimenisation of Sequoia
      The Seven Circles of Manoomin
      To Find a Waiting Fossil    
      Unmapping Landscape       

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©2025 Leela Keshav












Seed Storytellers: A Botanical Archive of London’s Square Mile


This solo exhibition of writing and drawings was created for the 2024 London Festival of Architecture and displayed outside the Lloyds of London building in the City. I was invited by the London-based design practice Urban Radicals to create an archive of seeds found in the Square Mile, showcasing their stories of migration and movement as tied to those of people.

The exhibition positions seeds as active actants within the urban ecosystem, centring them as storytellers, beings-in-motion and diasporic, forging communities alongside human populations. Each side of the pavilion showcases a different theme: Seed Storytellers, Seeds of Empire, Seed Diasporas, and Seeds of the Future.

The pavilion, designed by Urban Radicals and called the Voicing Pod, held podcasts and events over the summer, including a podcast I hosted in conversation with author and environmental historian Jessica J. Lee.

  Listen here   Find  out more



© Lorenzo Zandri

© Luke O’Donovan

© Luke O’Donovan

 © Luke O’Donovan
© Lorenzo Zandri

© Lorenzo Zandri
The original drawings are made with charcoal and chalk on handmade paper embedded with seeds.