Nabihah Iqbal
rhizome

Musician and broadcaster Nabihah Iqbal was born and lives in London. When the pandemic hit the world in March 2020, she became stranded while visiting her grandparents in Pakistan. She took this time away from home to learn about plants and herbal remedies and share her findings via her Instagram account, earning herself the moniker The Lockdown Herbalist.

My brown skin tells me there is more to this story

When Nabihah was invited to respond to the Physic Garden Network in early 2021, she was on her way back to Pakistan to see her grandparents. She chose to begin her work on this trip, focusing on one particular medicinal herb – haldi – known in the UK as turmeric. On returning to the UK, this spice took her on a journey to the Physic Garden in Nelson to meet with Idle Women founders Rachel Anderson and Cis O'Boyle as well as Jaheda Choudhury, one of the theatre-workers who worked alongside Rachel and Cis to cultivate the garden during the pandemic, and then onwards to Edinburgh to meet with Emma Nicholson, Head of Creative Programming at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh.

The spice, like the artist, is rooted in different places. And so too her work: the rhizomatic structure of Nabihah's interviews where each connects to each other is the result of a collaboration between the artist and another full moon artist, the designer of this website Vera van de Seyp. In some ways the structure of this audio piece mirrors the Physic Garden Network itself, a collection of connections that build and nourish each other underground while meeting together in the outside world isnt possible.