Join us for a presentation with Sean Smith, owner and lead compost farmer at Crooked Farmz, to hear about the Toronto-based urban microfarm and its role in bringing Delcy Morelos’s exhibition Ombligo to life.
The corn roots featured in Ombligo were grown right here in Toronto, at Crooked Farmz. With a focus on the microbial life beneath our feet, Smith will share the story of the farm, as it emerged from an interest in soil health, to its work producing compost tea. He’ll discuss regenerative growing practices and how concerns around food security, climate change, and our relationship with the land inform his approach to farming.
Smith’s work offers another perspective on Ombligo, Morelos’s immersive multisensory installation on MOCA’s Floor 2. Made with sisal rope, local soil, corn roots, and aromatics, this space-defining work invites us to consider our relationship with the earth. Smith and Morelos share profound respect for the earth, leading them to work in ways that attempt to heal it and reveal its power.
Taking place on Floor 2, this talk will begin with a short introduction by MOCA Artistic Director Rui Mateus Amaral introducing audiences to the exhibition and partnership between the museum and Crooked Farmz. A Q&A session will follow.
Limited capacity. Register today to secure your seat. Your ticket includes admission. Drop-ins welcome but seating will be limited to ticket holders.
About the Speaker
Sean Smith, is the owner of Crooked Farmz, a small-batch compost tea brewery and experimental market garden microfarm in Toronto. Now entering its 9th season, his work on local composting and compost tea brewing grows out of deeper concerns surrounding soil health, microbial life, climate change, and our relationships with land and water.
He is a member of the Many Hands Urban Farm Collective at Downsview Park and is president of Local 305 of the National Farmers Union-Ontario. He has earned several awards for innovation in urban agriculture and overall entrepreneurial distinction.
Before founding Crooked Farmz, Sean taught at the postsecondary level for 20 years and was a member of the Department of Biological Flow arts-research collective. Today he maintains an active poetics practice shaped by microbial processes and the decomposition of language.
