Forest soil
Environmental dimension
2020
What is the soil of a wood? What is it composed of?
A wood is a constantly self-renovating organism including the soil it produces (as part of the cycle of life of trees) as a whole. The soil of a wood is the place of mix, of the metamorphic continuity of life that sustains that habitat while it breeds it. Biology and geology synchronize here to make room for life. Here plant bodies, through the action of microorganisms, turn into soil in a slow process of decomposition and reorganization of elements.
Leaves and branches fall down and enter the metabolic cycles of soil enriching it with nutrients for plants life continuity. The wood creates its own environment feeding itself, in a perpetual process of renewal.
I collected a sample of ground from a coniferous forest in Val di Fiemme, where the Vaia storm had struck. The soil was sifted and disassembled in its visible organic and inorganic elements, and then reassembled in a thorough work of division and grouping.
Through this action, the natural process of decomposition is paused, temporarily showing what lies inside the ground as far as the elements that compose it.
This work represents the realization of a scaled 1:1 process of knowing aimed to restore a link with matter and time, with an underground and organic dimension of the being, reconciling the quantifiable with the wonderful.
Work produced for the Mountain Museum in Turin, Italy, for the Tree Time exhibition, curated by Andrea Lerda and Daniela Berta, at the Muse, Museum of Science in Trento, Italy.