Using her own body to interact with the soil, Elena Khurtova explores our ability to create a reciprocal relationship with the ground beneath our feet. Zooming into so called grondbanken – sites where excavated soils are collected before their migration to become part of new landscapes – she investigates how soils are cared for and contained. On these physical sites, walls made of concrete blocks are often used to temporarily host and divide piles of soil: soil that was originally part of a natural landscape is now contained in an interior space creating another kind of landscape.

In the glass pavilion, Elena Khurtova presents the process of transforming displaced soils into these monolith concrete blocks and back into earth. Soils from the Amstelpark and elsewhere – sand, clay, compost – will each respond in their own way to the process of being compacted into these restricted industrial shapes and change them over time. The opening of the exhibition is the starting point of an ongoing process of the performative making of the objects and their subsequent entropy back to matter. The exhibition format is thus expanded into a working space which over the two months gradually transforms, making it worthwhile to visit the exhibition at various stages.

Soil Works: When rocks weather is a performative exploration of both the care and control that is part of the human relationship to soil, while also raising questions about industrial processes and how these originate in craft and play. Can we regain a sense of play and intimate connection in the production of capitalist structures? How do tools relate to our body, how does time become embodied in labour, and how does the performativity of matter continue in the structures after they have been made? As matter changes shape over time, we contemplate how every particle of sand through its own tactility tells us a story.