SOIL WORKS - Elena Khurtova
Soil Works is a site-specific project by artist Elena Khurtova, unanimously chosen by the jury as the winner of the inaugural Drenthe Contemporary Award, developed in collaboration with grondbank, Meppel. This project is a part of the artist’s long term engagement into relationships between humans and soil.
Through her ongoing research Khurtova has been exploring processes of soil displacement, researching soil management sites — the grondbanken, where excavated soils are temporarily stored, classified and redistributed. Under EU legislation excavated soil of more than 50 m3 is considered waste. On these physical sites, concrete-block walls are used to temporarily host and separate piles of soil: soils are cared for and contained. By juxtaposing notions of automation and intimacy, waste and kinship, containment and resistance, Khurtova investigates the ambiguity of control and care in human relations with soil.
The project combines a transient installation composed of blocks of different soils from the surrounding, sourced at the soil management terrain in Meppel, with photographic images depicting the same grondbank. Each soil is compacted into a monolithic block, as the concrete blocks used on grondbank terrains. Through performative transformation—compacting soils into solid forms using rammed earth technique and allowing them to slowly return to matter—the work explores cycles of extraction, preservation and decay.
On the last day of the exhibition Kunstwerk Kolderveen will organise a seminar, which will result in inviting the public to engage with the soil, to share it and to welcome it at their households.
Rooted in the landscape and history of Drenthe, layered with peat extraction, land cultivation and shifting ecologies, Khurtova’s project weaves local context into broader reflections on how humans relate to soils. It explores how we as humans might cultivate reciprocity with the land rather than extract from it, revealing the living agency of soil — its capacity to record, to resist, and to renew.
The jury of the inaugural edition of Drenthe Contemporary Award consisted of Anke Bangma (artistic director, TENT, platform for Contemporary Arts, Rotterdam), Hilde de Bruijn (artistic director, Into Nature, Drenthe), Clare Molloy (curator at Groninger Museum).
Drenthe Contemporary Art Prize is made possible with generous support of Mondriaan Fonds, Provincie Drenthe, Gemeente Meppel, Cultuur Platform Meppel, Waarborgfonds Meppel and C&W de Boer Stichting.
Opening hours
From 13–16 uur
6–7 dec, 12–14 dec, 9–11 jan, 16–18 jan, 23-25 jan, 30–1 feb.
Address
Kunstwerk Kolderveen, Kolderveen 26a, 7948NJ Nijeveen