Notebook of Return / Carnet de Retour

Céline Semaan

Céline Semaan is a Lebanese-born artist, writer, and designer working at the intersection of ancestral memory, climate justice, and cultural liberation. She is the founder of Slow Factory, an independent media and cultural laboratory building tools for collective education, resistance, and repair. Through text, textiles, video, and public pedagogy, Semaan creates work that transforms personal narrative into political curriculum. Her recent memoir A Woman is a School has become a widely read cultural artifact—an urgent archive of diaspora, displacement, and imagination as survival.

Semaan’s practice is rooted in the belief that every act of storytelling is an act of world-building. She uses media as both mirror and portal: challenging dominant narratives, archiving erased histories, and designing frameworks for liberation that center women, refugees, and communities on the frontlines of climate and colonial violence. Her work has been exhibited, published, and circulated internationally—from refugee camps in Lebanon to cultural institutions in New York and beyond—and has been cited as foundational to the global shift toward ethical fashion, climate literacy, and postcolonial design.

As Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of Everything is Political, Céline curates a media platform where culture, aesthetics, and political discourse converge, amplifying underrepresented voices and challenging the narratives that shape our world. A globally recognized thought leader, Céline serves on the Council of Progressive International, was a Director’s Fellow at MIT Media Lab, and shaped the future of design as a member of the Board of Directors at AIGA NY, New York’s premier nonprofit for design innovation.

Her insights have been sought by New York Magazine: The Cut, Elle, Refinery29, and Huffington Post, and her work has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times, CNN, Scientific American, Fast Company, Teen Vogue, and countless other leading publications. Céline’s interdisciplinary practice — bridging fashion, design, activism, and storytelling — positions her as a bold cultural force, a bridge between visionary aesthetics and global impact.

Céline Semaan. Photo by Todd Johnson.

Jean-Marc Bullet

Jean-Marc Bullet is a design-artist based in Martinique who utilizes design as a catalyst for social innovation. His practice focuses on creating social and cultural bonds within territories, specifically questioning ecological relationships in post-colonial environments. Rather than simply delivering technical solutions, he develops devices that foster dialogue and collaborative community projects.

A graduate of the Haute École des arts du Rhin (HEAR) (2005) and ENSCI – Les Ateliers (2007), Jean-Marc was a 2021 laureate of the “Mondes Nouveaux” program. His project, Presqu’une île, used a multi-sensory approach to explore the ecological and social complexities of the mangrove.

His international experience includes several years in China’s marble and solar industries, where he worked to reduce corporate carbon footprints. His work has been recognized by a German Design Award in 2019 for the Nestot compost bin. Recent achievements include a collaboration with CB2 on furniture inspired by the Caribbean diaspora and a residency at Villa Albertine in New York. Today, his work explores the transmission of medicinal plant knowledge and entrepreneurial initiatives that reconnect the Caribbean diaspora with its matrimonial heritage.

Collaborators

Allana Clarke’s Amend Garden

Allana Clarke is an interdisciplinary artist and educator and is currently an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University (Detroit). Her creative research initiative, Amend Garden, is an organic farm that functions as an ecological, arts-centered space, cultivating land-based knowledge and addressing food insecurity among low-income residents.

Antioch Baptist Church and Sumner High School with Counterpublic

Antioch Baptist Church and Sumner High School are historical anchors of The Ville (North St. Louis), a culturally significant neighbourhood that was among the first in the area where Black Americans could own property. The Church’s garden is stewarded by the high school students and contains an active food pantry, highlighting their ongoing commitment to community support.

St. Louis’s Counterpublic is a triennial that reimagines the possibilities of art in public life. It creates art with lasting impact by bringing together bold ideas with the region’s most pressing challenges through artist commissions, convenings, editions, and civic initiatives.

Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers Collective

The Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers Collective cares for a thirteen-year-old urban farm. It was co-founded by residents who sought to put ancestral ways of growing and sharing into practice through the knowledge of Black farmers. Increasing access to land, with a focus on education and training, the Collective strengthens local food systems by working with crops from tropical, equatorial, and local seasonal zones.

Jean-Marc Bullet’s Heritage Des Îles

Heritage Des Îles is a creole family garden  located between two tropical forests in Martinique, Rabuchon and Coeur Bouliki, that maintains traditional practices inherited from African ancestors who grew medicinal plants and crops outside the plantation. As the local environment faces ecological issues, like chlordecone pollution, they experiment by adopting practices from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Mary Mattingly’s Floating Garden with Medina Triennial

Mary Mattingly is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans large-scale public sculpture and collage-based photography, imagining adaptive futures shaped by ecological interdependence. Her sculptural ecosystems inhabit civic space—from floating food forests to tidal water clocks—bringing attention to water, food, and shelter.

The Medina Triennial is a contemporary art triennial centred in the Western New York village of Medina, along the Erie Canal. Intersecting art, ecology, and rural contexts, the Triennial considers maintenance as a social, political, and environmental condition shaped by fragility and resilience.

Céline Semaan’s Slow Forest

The Slow Forest is an artist-run initiative focused on land stewardship, rewilding practices, and planting native species significant to Lenape knowledge. Through workshops, natural dyeing, concerts, film screenings, and exhibitions, it fosters ecological care, cultural exchange, and collective learning.