Soil Study

“The land is to the people what blood is to the body” – Tránsito Amaguaña (1909-2009)

Soil Study (2024) is an ongoing series by artist sarah koekkoek of discursive experiments, processes, interventions and conversations between the human body and soil/soil memory.

sarah has been deeply engaged in these explorations over the past 3 years, working through an array of artistic mediums including sculpture, photography, screen printing, movement, choreography, digital GIFs and ASCII art. Much like our bodies, soil hosts ecological life, political struggles and cultural memory through slow accumulation, care and violence. This presentation of a process based performance is situated on the ancestral lands of many First Nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat. The audience is invited to witness a weaving together of personal memories etched into mine and the performers bodies together with 9,000 years of collective, historical and biological narratives of soil bodies. These memories, embedded in both human and soil archives, collide, converge, resist, mourn, celebrate and repair in unison. 

Engaging with soil in this way means confronting questions of repair, responsibility, and futurity. Together we resist the damage of industrial, agricultural and colonial extraction. Manifesting alternative time scales, where like the soil, we accumulate memory through repetition, sedimentation and decay.  

Curated by Holly Chang

Choreographed by sarah koekkoek

Performed by sarah koekkeok & Eve Tagny

Outside eye support by Amanda Acorn & Aisha Sasha John