FISH ARE TEACHERS
☆ ARTIST ☆ RESIDENCY
☆ PROGRAM ☆
FROM ☆ OKO ☆ FARMS ☆
FISH ARE TEACHERS is a lightweight artist residency program from New York's first aquaponics farm, Oko Farms on the rooftop of Honey’s in Brooklyn - with support from Aerthship.
Fish Are Teachers invites (6) artists across disciplines to engage with the ecological processes that sustain life and explore how their creative practices exist in dialogue with the natural world, in collaboration with Oko Farms.
The residency highlights the many ways we can cultivate relationships with nature through urban agriculture and collective creativity.
ETHOS
As farmers, we are not separate from this ecosystem—we are participants within it, acting as both stewards and students.
Throughout human history, our relationship with nature has been shaped through both agriculture and art. At Oko Farms, aquaponics embodies this connection: a living, symbiotic system where fish, plants, water, microbes, and people sustain one another. Through this process, we cultivate food, medicine, natural dyes, and textiles within the city while learning from the intelligence and balance already present in nature.
Fish Are Teachers emerges from this understanding: that nature is not simply a resource to extract from, but a collaborator, guide, and source of knowledge.
COLLABORATION
Each collaboration is as an immersive evening co-created by Oko Farms and participating artists.
Collaborations may take the form of talks, dance performances, musical experiences, installations, exhibitions, workshops, readings, communal meals, or interdisciplinary presentations shaped collaboratively between the artist and Oko Farms.
THEMES
Rooted in Oko Farms’ mission, we have selected a few themes to serve as an inspiration for the collaboration:
WATER IS LIFE
Water cycles endlessly between fish and plants at Oko Farms, nourishing food, medicine, and dye crops while honoring the natural reciprocity that sustains all living beings.
FISH ARE TEACHERS
Fish are the driving force of our aquaponic ecosystem, schooling us in the laws of interdependence, balance, and reciprocity and revealing that every action, no matter how small, sends ripples through the whole of life.
ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
In a city of concrete, Oko Farms is a living demonstration that urban agriculture can shelter birds, pollinators, insects, and microorganisms while functioning as a water refuge that actively weaves biodiversity back into the urban fabric.
URBAN ECOLOGY + DESIGN
Urban farming is the creative act of refusing to see any space as wasted, turning rooftops, backyards, vacant lots, and classrooms into living ecosystems that make designers, builders, and caretakers out of ordinary people driven by the desire to nourish their communities.
FOOD AS MEDICINE
Food is essential for the health of the body, mind, and spirit; it is a healing practice rooted in the rituals of growing, cooking, and sharing that binds communities together, preserves culture, and tends to the health of body, mind, and spirit all at once.
FASHION IS AGRICULTURE
For most of human history, clothing was inseparable from the land, where textile crops, dye plants like indigo and marigold, and food plants grew side by side in a seamless ecology that reminds us fashion has always been an agricultural act rich with medicinal, cultural, and environmental meaning.
PROGRAM OFFERING
LEARN
(1-Hour June Session)
EXHIBIT
June 24-July 29(Wednesdays)
DOCUMENT
Oko Farms (est. 2013) is New York City's only publicly accessible aquaponics farm, educational center, and community hub. Using aquaponics, we sustainably grow fish and plants together in a recirculating ecosystem to save water and grow more food in small, urban spaces.
The word “oko” pays homage to our founder’s Yoruba heritage. Oko is a Yoruba word which loosely translates to farm in English. A more accurate definition of the word is a province or place where agriculture is at the center of socio-economic life, daily activities, and cultural traditions.
@ Honey’s (Rooftop)
99 Scott Avenue,
Brooklyn, New York 11237