Filmed during and just after a two-month lockdown in Marseille, Let Us Heal Together is a visual exploration of this chalky, herbaceous land; a guided meditation into developing a relationship with the plants around us.

Whilst the flora I explore are specific to this landscape, the intentions and ways of approaching them are more global and can be received as an approach or way of thinking (like a base-recipe that can then be developed and adapted according to tastes, desires and seasons.)

Bringing into dialogue the blue waters of the Mediterranean and the intricate ecology of the garrigues—white stone, rosemary, thyme and wild asparagus coexisting with salsifis, sarriette and acanthus—Let Us Heal Together also serves as a personal archive of a daily ritual I adopted, the act of walking with my dog morning and evening on the hill, following unknown (and then familiar) paths; harvesting herbs; observing the changing of a meadow during the blissful coming of spring and the searing, dry summer that then followed.

Zuri Camille de Souza is a chef and graphic designer. She eats to understand and she cooks to think. Working with landscapes, the ocean and migration, she writes, collects plants and gathers stories. With a sharp interest in politics and botany, she focuses on the way human beings individually and collectively interact with their environment through acts of healing, ingesting and nourishing. She searches for the perceptual, sensual and emotional foundations that shape these interactions and looks for design processes that restore and challenge our relationship to the natural world.

In 2017, along with Jimmy Granger, de Souza co-founded A-1 publishers, a floating publishing house, and worked on a collaborative landscaping project and independent publishing workshops with displaced communities on the island of Lesbos from 2018–19. She is also a passionate sailor, currently based in Marseille, where she runs Sanna, her new catering and creative studio that aims to decolonise coastal Indian culinary identities through sensitive, plant-based meals rich in flavour and history.