Soil and Friends
PLATO City Gallery of Contemporary Art in Ostrava and the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art invite you to the second edition of the exhibition Soil and Friends. Marking PLATO's 10th anniversary, the exhibition builds on earlier collaborations between the two institutions and continues their reflection on art as a space for collectively experiencing and engaging with nature.
The large-scale exhibition Soil and Friends invites visitors to look down – to the place where our feet meet the ground. Developed by PLATO City Gallery of Contemporary Art in Ostrava in collaboration with thirty artists and the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, it asks: what if soil is our closest, yet least understood ally? Visitors are invited to explore possible answers until 13 September. The exhibition forms a key part of PLATO's 10th anniversary celebrations.
Occupying all of PLATO's gallery spaces, the international exhibition Soil and Friends has been curated by Marianna Dobkowska and Edith Jeřábková. They approach soil as a living, dynamic community of organisms, relationships and processes – the fundamental condition for life on Earth and the environment in which sustainable interdependencies between all living beings, including humans, are formed. The exhibition presents a multilayered narrative of soil as a biological system, a cultural space, an archive of history and a political subject. It brings together scientific knowledge, artistic imagination and practical experience related to land stewardship and care for the landscape. The exhibition was first presented in Warsaw last year.
Rather than offering fixed interpretations, the exhibition encourages attentiveness. It invites visitors to perceive the sounds, rhythms, cycles and relationships that often remain beyond everyday awareness. "For us, the earth is the centre – a place where culture and nature, the past and the future meet. For a long time, we have treated it as something utilitarian: a resource, a possession, a tool. We want to present it instead as a partner," say the exhibition's curators, Edith Jeřábková and Marianna Dobkowska.
The exhibition features works by thirty artists representing a wide range of approaches and fields of interest. Their practices encompass film, installation, drawing, sound research and living materials. Some employ scientific methods, constructing specialised microphones to record sounds beneath the earth's surface. Others draw on personal experience of shepherding or breeding new plant varieties.
A central theme of the exhibition is regenerative agriculture and the restoration of the soil's carbon function – its ability to retain water and store carbon through microbiological processes and vegetation. The artworks reveal the interdependence of grasslands, grazing animals and soil microorganisms, draw attention to pastoral cultures, and highlight the crucial role of soil in stabilising the water cycle and regulating the planet's temperature.
- Artists
- Marie Boková, Centrala (Małgorzata Kuciewicz & Simone De Iacobis), Julia Ciunowicz, Polina Davydenko, Dva ospalí vlci (Two Sleepy Wolves), Yoeri Guépin, Ingela Ihrman, Yana Kononova, Dávid Koronczi, Denisa Langrová, Judita Levitnerová & Kateřina Žák Konvalinová, Barbora Lungová & Lenka Škutová & local flower growers, Krzysztof Maniak, Deirdre O'Mahony, Julia Ábalos Reznak, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Alex Sihelsk*, Sounding Soil, Rosario Talevi, Salka Tiziana, Ana Vaz, Ewelina Węgiel, Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur und Natur, Kryštof Zvolánek
- Curators
- Marianna Dobkowska, Edith Jeřábková
- Exhibition Architecture
- Zbyněk Baladrán
- Graphic Design
- Ľubica Segečová, Róbert Púček
