In Conversation with ‘Pickled Roots’: The Evergreen Collective
Saranka Maheswaran speaks to the founders of ‘Pickled Roots’, a community that centres queer and trans East and Southeast Asian people in Cambridge
Photo by William B-H @naturalist.jpeg
At its heart, ‘‘Pickled Roots’ is a “nourishing, generative community...that centres queer and trans East and Southeast Asian people”. The name emerged when Nat and Tiger, its postgraduate co-founders, were pickling radishes. Tiger had taken a picture of the radishes on account of how pretty they were; “trying to make a background for the account poster, I was like, oh my god! Pickled roots”.
They found that the name spoke to the complexities in navigating “diasporic relations”, with ‘pickling’ being able to take “many meanings”. Pickling can be “preserving something...but [also] altering it in the process”, as well as to “be in a pickle”. The sense of multiplicity contained within the name speaks to the collective’s ambition to provide a space which celebrates both East and South East Asian heritage, as well as the queer and trans identities of its members. Where people may find themselves in a “pickle” trying to fuse these elements of their identity together, ‘Pickled Roots’ shows that the two can thrive through artistic expression and community.
‘They found that the name spoke to the complexities in navigating “diasporic relations”, with ‘pickling’ being able to take “many meanings”.’
The seeds of the collective were sown when Nat was doing research abroad in America and Tiger visited them. Before they knew it, they figured out that they both had ideas of “artistic pursuits” that they’d “been kind of ruminating over and thinking about for a while”; but “neither of us particularly felt like we had the right spaces where we could talk about our ideas bouncing off each other and get excited about them”. Since then, what was initially a group of people creating art and exploring their queer and East or South East Asian identities has flourished. The group has pursued an approach which allows the collective to be defined by its membership. “I thought we would just put something out there, see who we find, see what people are interested in and take it from there.”
Tiger emphasised that Pickled Roots is “not interested in representing queer Eastern and Southeast Asian people”, but rather being a collective, providing a free space in which people “who all have kind of something in common” can come together. While some societies are based around specific identities or cultures which aim to be forms of representation, ’Pickled Roots’ in this regard is a relaxed space where you do not need to perform to a particular ideal. It is the “blurriness of what it might be that we have in common that is what’s quite cool about it”. ‘Pickled Roots’ is keen that it does not have “particularly hard edges” as there is an understanding that being “East and Southeast Asian is a highly varied experience” and therefore is open to all. Nat reflects that the collective has offered “a feeling of refuge in finding people who can understand what it might be to come from backgrounds that are both beautiful but also sometimes at odds with other axes of your identity”.
The collective has had the opportunity to channel its creativity through participating in bigger spaces such as ‘Hestia Cambridge’, a queer-led creative community that organises art festivals. At one such festival, ‘Pickled Roots’ contributed by creating a “cosy living room space, trying to riff on the idea of homemaking or space making in one sense”. Nat created a sculpture piece involving the pickling of lotus root in a jar connected with carabiner clips. “Lotus root or what I would have called water lily is something that I grew up eating a lot, something my mum would have made or does make, and they’re joined together by carabiners which if you know, you know”.
‘This is a collective that is evergreen; it is in a state of constant development, continuing to share its creative space through both food and conversation’
For the festival Tiger did a painting of the first three members of the collective; she spoke about how “for a few weeks…it was just us three and we were like, oh my god, are we the only queer East or Southeast Asian people in Cambridge?”. In a similar creative outreach, they also connected with ‘Dots not Feathers’, a South Asian art collective, and the ‘Cambridge Black Creatives’, facilitating meaningful connections and artmaking whilst engaging with wider queer and people of colour spaces. This all adds to the excitingly rich tapestry of space-making that can be seen in Cambridge currently.
Another aspect of the ‘Pickled Roots’ collective is accessibility; this is something which is reflected in how tickets are organised for their upcoming ‘Lunar New Year’ event being held at the Blue Moon on the 8th of February. Not only is it set to be an evening filled with music, snacks, artwork, dancing and community but if you find yourself unable to donate, you will not be turned away. There is no set price for the ticket, and whilst of course “if you can donate it is incredible…and really valuable”, the collective is keen to ensure that no one is “unable to access community for financial reasons”.
Oxymoronically perhaps, ‘Pickled Roots’ is a collective rooted in being in flux with Tiger describing how there are “ebbs and flows”: it initially felt almost “supernatural” to be in a space that was so incredibly comforting but, in time, it became “normal and nice”. This is a collective that is evergreen; it is in a state of constant development, continuing to share its creative space through both food and conversation amongst its growing intergenerational community. This sums up the beautiful ordinariness about the collective, reflecting that it is not an intimidating space but simply a welcoming one.
Nat and Tiger have achieved this whilst managing to preserve a sense of heritage and being able to bring together people who identify as queer and trans: “two things which can appear to be incompatible but are not”. ‘Pickled Roots’ have cultivated a patch in Cambridge where people can find both familiarity and freshness, connection and collaboration, all “grown organically”.