Shifting Geologies (2020-ongoing)

Shifting Geologies, 2020-ongoing, Installation view & detail, mixed media after simulation of the rock formation process, phosphorescent acrylic tubes on bricks, magnifying lenses, engravings on acetate sheet, glass containers, Soil Conversations Exhibition, Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin, DE, 2023

"Compost is a place of constant change, where the old is almost completely recycled and thus the new is created. However, if one looks at the earth in its sedimentary layers of rock, the past is still chronicled in it and often clearly visible. Barad describes in her above mentioned essay the ability of soil to store memories and at the same time be a place of life and death: "Land is not property or territory; it is a time-being marked by its own wounds and vitality, a layered material geo-neuro-biography of bones and bodies, ashes and earth, where death and life meet".**** Barad's characterization of land as "time-being" is visible in artist Silvia Noronha’s series “Shifting Geologies” (2020-). Through scientific forms of presentation she admirably highlights the human impact on the earth through resource exploitation and extraction.

The "Shifting Geologies" series are multi-layered sculptures in which the artist has fused natural materials with artificial ones. The resulting works are reminiscent of rock samples from geological research in their shape, size, and sedimentary nature. Noronha combines earth and soil samples with glass, plastic or electronic waste and compresses them under enormous pressure. It resembles geological processes that normally extend over several millennia. Through combinations with magnifying glasses and drawings, Noronha references scientific methods in her project, which has been ongoing since 2020. Her investigations serve as an approach to the created objects and, by extension, to the larger questions on the relations between humans and nature. Noronha's work intriguingly combines a view from the future to the present with materials drawn from the past. Just as layers of soil bear witness to climatic conditions of other millennia, different temporalities flow into one another in her sculptures, conveying a compressed image of our present".

Excerpt from a publication in the context of the exhibition: full publication

About the exhibition: Soil Conversations

Soil Conversations presents nine artistic propositions from South Africa and Germany, looking at the granularity of soil as material, our relationship to the ground on which we build life on and soil as a bearer of memory, identity and speculative futures.

The exhibition connects two geographical points - the Galerie im Körnerpark in Berlin and the Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa. Soil Conversations unfolds itself rhizomatically through the sharing of curatorial and artistic processes on our project website, the two physical exhibitions and through textual engagements of writers from both cities.

Soil Conversations is an exhibition that explores the relationship between humans and the environment, both in the digital and analogue spheres. The exhibition presents soil as a space of meaning, identity, and history, and questions the concept of linearity in favour of interstitial spaces. It looks at soil as a planetary boundary, a resource that has been
exploited, a territory that forms geography, and a mixture of nurture, trauma, and cycles of life.

The exhibition also explores the relationship between the analogue and digital, considering the digital as a space of pixelated dialectics where one can exist beyond the boundaries and borders defined by history and politics, but still not completely free from them. But the body remembers — even in the transition between particles and pixels, we carry the histories
inscribed into our corporealities into this digital terra nullius. Topics such as land, history, spirituality, and the body are integral to the artworks in Soil Conversations. The exhibition aims to engage with the speculative and to explore the plurality of the past and future scenarios, as a relationship between humans and the world, and as a defining position of the present moment.

Curated by Yolanda Kaddu-Mulindwa & Nisha Merit in Kooperation/cooperation with Bubblegum Club

https://galerie-im-koernerpark.de/en/exhibitions/soil-conversations

https://www.instagram.com/soil_conversations_project/

https://iqoqo.org/soil-conversations/

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About the exhibition: Soil Conversations

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