Artist Evgenia Emets shares the development of her Eternal Forest sanctuary vision into its latest phase as the Seed of Eternal Forest, with opportunities for artists, scientists and thinkers globally to become a movement and mutually supportive network.
2,100 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe has followed Eternal Forest since 2019 and, for this post, shared questions with Evgenia as she was drafting it.
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“Eternal Forest is a living commitment that reminds us across generations: we are nature, and by regenerating forest, we regenerate ourselves.”
Looking back at your decision to start Eternal Forest, what was your inspiration for this, and what did you set out to achieve? How do you feel about that looking back now?
My original inspiration to start Eternal Forest came from witnessing the deep disconnect our culture has created between forests and people. I began Eternal Forest in 2018, six months after moving from the UK to Portugal, and shortly after witnessing the aftermath of devastating fires that destroyed large areas of land here.
These were not just forest fires. They were the result of pervasive monocultures, especially eucalyptus plantations, which have profoundly altered the landscape, increased its vulnerability and reduced its resilience. My initial question was to explore how we might reconnect humans and forests, not only through art, but also through remembering and reactivating our sacred relationship with forests.
Much of my inspiration came from seeing that for millennia, Indigenous and traditional communities across the world have lived in deep reciprocity with their natural environments, holding forests as spiritually significant and relational beings. The understanding that our material and immaterial cultures come directly from forests became a foundation for my work.
Eternal Forest Sanctuary
In the early years, I created the vision for an Eternal Forest Sanctuary — a physical space (reforested or restored and protected) focused on biodiversity and natural habitats, created through art with communities as long-term stewards of this forest. While my experience and practice are rooted in Portugal, where I live, I see the intentional creation of forest spaces, which we can call sanctuaries, as necessary and timely.
Looking back now, I can say that dedicating my time to Eternal Forest has opened many possibilities in my artistic practice. It revealed new paths of knowledge about forests, showed new ways of learning and being with this wonderful and complex organism. It also opened new relationships with people and organisations: scientists, artists, researchers, and regenerators of many kinds. And artistically it offered me a completely different medium — I started exploring how forest itself can be a methodology and what I could do differently with my art if forest were my studio, my medium, my collaborator and my gallery.
As the project evolved, and as I evolved with it, my perspective also shifted. In the beginning, my focus was more on what was missing and where the gaps were. Gradually, this changed into uncovering and witnessing the beautiful possibilities that already exist in our relationship with forests around the world. Whether we encounter healthy forests or forests in need of restoration, there is always a way to experience joy, to lean into the deep unlearning and receive wisdom directly from the land and its beings.
“We are forest, and we are not separate from it” — this core perspective led me to explore subjects such as forest sentience, plant intelligence, finding ways to communicate with nature and being led by the land while working on projects.
Embodying deep connection
What have you learned so far that was maybe a surprise? Or what have others brought to the project?
One of the most surprising experiences for me last year was realising how deeply we are connected to the land through our bodies, our psyche, our imagination, and our emotions. Intellectually, this is something we already understand, or at least we think we do. But it was only through working closely with the land, especially while walking with the land and designing Eternal Forest in Faia Brava, that this understanding became fully embodied.
I began to sense how intrinsically interconnected we are, almost like entangled bodies that, once they have encountered each other, remain in communication. What happens to the land happens to us, and what happens to us also affects the land. When we work with land that has been disrespected or shaped by extractive behaviours, we feel that impact in our own bodies and inner landscapes.
The healing that takes place through restoration and through re-revealing the land’s beauty is mirrored by a healing within our own psyche and physical being. The experience of pain, the witnessing of beauty, the awe of natural phenomena, the sensual moments of being in close touch with the beings of the land, the spiritual closeness of encountering a rare animal — all that goes both ways, it’s a constant conversation. And then how all of that can be woven into practice, into artwork, linked back into the loop of co-regulating and co-evolving.
I am still exploring creative ways to tune more deeply into this field, and to find forms of expression that allow me to transform and alchemise these experiences and share them with others by creating sanctuaries, trails, poetry, and landmarks.
The Seed of Eternal Forest
What is the latest phase of work? What comes next?
One of the latest phases of my work is the creation of the Seed of Eternal Forest in Faia Brava in Portugal. The Seed represents a beginning. It is usually a small-scale intervention that initiates a much longer process of an Eternal Forest Sanctuary on a bigger size land.
In this case, we are working with a conservation organisation in Portugal called Faia Brava, on a very beautiful site along the wild and ancient Côa River, a UNESCO heritage site, with 30,000-year-old engravings of wild animals dotted around the river valley from the hunter-gatherer era. It is such an inspiration for any artist to be connecting with this ancient land. We are working in a context of ageing and declining rural populations, severe deforestation and land degradation, and extremely low rainfall, with conditions that increasingly resemble a semi-desert landscape.
The first intervention we created is a 30-metre-diameter Seed. This is a symbolic moment that emerges from working closely with the land: observing it, listening to it, and understanding the ecosystem, including which species might arrive and which might remain over time. Our next phase is to go through the process of developing an artistic regenerative design for forest and ecosystem restoration across a much larger area of 10ha, a process that will unfold over many years.
When I approach design, I ask myself: What is the experience people will have when they visit this place? What is the experience of the local community and their relationship to the land? What kinds of experiences can other artists have here, and how might they contribute to the evolution of Eternal Forest and Faia Brava? Another important question is how younger generations will interact with this place, and how they might become stewards and guardians not only of this specific area, but of the wider surrounding landscape, which requires long-term care and attention.
The idea for the design of the Seed in Faia Brava is a symbolic labyrinth, an infinite loop tracing a four-petal meandering path. It takes you through several turns that mirror the inner journey of the pilgrim, the psyche of the land, and the land’s own long story.
The Seed holds trees, bushes and plants chosen for their white blossom, but also being native plants from this area. The idea is that as you visit this Eternal Forest in any season, the Seed always presents itself in colour — a variation of white, where every plant is medicine for the land, animals, and each other. Everything in the Seed is designed to attract biodiversity — pollinators, wildlife — and to create a deep experiential space for humans.
I am further developing designs and possible interventions for different locations. At this point, I am increasingly interested in creating concrete, physical projects that are co-created in collaboration with land and communities, rather than focusing solely on visual artworks.
What follows in the coming months is the formalisation of this work through the organisation Eternal Forest, which was registered in December 2025. Over the past year, and continuing into this year, much of the focus has been on developing projects and creating fundable proposals together with communities, landowners, and land stewards.
What is your vision for Nature Connectedness?
When we speak about nature connectedness, I feel it is important to acknowledge that the term itself already implies separation. To say that we need to ‘connect with nature’ suggests that nature is something outside of ourselves. In reality, we are not separate from nature, but we are living the great illusion, as we have disconnected ourselves from the understanding that we are part of it.
We have moved very far away from seeing ourselves as embedded within natural systems. For me, this is why creating physical spaces is so important. These spaces allow us to create conditions where we can return to harmony with a place, learn directly through practice with the land, and be in direct, embodied relationship with a specific landscape over long cycles of time. Only then we can truly embed ourselves into the land, just like an animal does — find out own paths, find our own rhythm, find our own sacred place, find our own home within the land again.
Inviting all: artists, scientists, thinkers
Is there a way for other ClimateCultures members to reflect on this work? Maybe to get involved?
There are several ways for ClimateCultures members, artists, to reflect on the work and to get involved.
First of all, Eternal Forest is held together by a set of questions that I hold personally and that we also hold collectively as an organisation. This is the first year that Eternal Forest is formally operating as an organisation, and while we are building this new structure, we are also opening the space for reflection and dialogue around these questions.
We are inviting artists, scientists, and thinkers to imagine together with us how Eternal Forest can become a movement and a mutually supportive network. How can artists anywhere in the world catalyse and create their own Eternal Forest with their local communities? And how can the Eternal Forest ‘mother tree’ organisation support them over the long term?
This year in September, we will host an Eternal Forest camp at The Gathering in Portugal, a gathering for regenerative culture. I warmly invite everyone to join. We will release invitations in March, and alongside this, we will be running a series of online conversations. These will be spaces to reflect, contribute, and connect both artistically and philosophically with the community.
In the meantime, people can follow the project by subscribing to our Substack or joining our Telegram channel.
As we establish our first four sanctuaries, we will start opening art residencies.
The success of Eternal Forest depends on people around the world who raise their hand and say, “We have land, with or without forest, that needs protection, and we feel the local community is ready to engage. We want to create a legacy that lasts.”
We are open to collaborating with artists, art foundations, curators, landowners, public institutions, conservation organisations, rewilding initiatives, and tree-planting projects. So I invite everyone who resonates with this work to follow the project, connect with us online for now, and, over time, to become part of this co-creation journey.
Find more
Discover more at Eternal Forest — which includes the short film below on Eternal Forest in Faia Brava 2025 and other videos and art — and on the project’s Substack and Telegram channel.
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From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.
Evgenia — “I use AI to transcode my speech because the way I write a lot of the time is I speak (sometimes walking in the land!). Then I edit my text. Once in a while, I use AI selectively for research — more technical and comparative. All the stories, images and illustrations are original.”
