SOIL SOUL
EXPERIEMNTAL GALLERY / CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, NY / USA 2021
ABRIE FOURIE (SOUTH AFRICA) ELLA ZIEGLER (GERMANY)
With the project SOIL SOUL by the artists Ella Ziegler and Abrie Fourie, Cornell University expands the cross-disciplinary inquiry into forward-looking art-science collaborations. Poetic reflection and scientific speculation about our environment will be presented through photography, conecptual art, poetry, fabric and installation. Soils house the largest biodiversity on the planet and at the same time is endangered by desertification and contamination.
Soil is also connected to creation stories in many belief systems, indigenous people connect to soil as a sacred element and medium, which incorporates spirits and energies, and survival of civilizations have always (and still are!) connected to soil health and its destruction. At the center of the proposed exhibition project lies the relationship of language, poetry and memory of soilscapes and how we may connect to this extraordinary territory. Soils build but also clash
with civilization in the photography of Abrie Fourie. Fourie’s photographs document and detect the layers of urbanization and civilization in daily life situations.
Ella Ziegler poses questions about the human inability of sensing and recognizing. The collaboration between Ziegler, Fourie and Johannes Lehmann from the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University, is not only an inquiry into the human dimension of environmental destruction and cognition in general, but also serves as an opportunity to showcase the development of a new art-science collaboration at a fundamental level. The ensuing insights into artistic work lay bare a sensibility that allows scientific access to different ways of looking and questioning beyond monodisciplinary conversations.
Johannes Lehmann