Let's Talk About the Exhibition: Soil & Water (ENGLISH)

“Soil & Water” was developed in collaboration with Prof. Johan Thom (Pretoria), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Başak Şenova (Vienna), and the NIROX Foundation (South Africa). The Kunsthaus Dahlem is one of the project’s institutional partners.

The project examines how environmental conditions are understood, represented, and addressed in various social and cultural contexts. In doing so, it highlights the interconnectedness of ecological systems and forms of knowledge while emphasizing the importance of transdisciplinary and intercultural exchange—with a particular focus on artistic research and practice—as a response to the ecological challenges of our time.

About the series

Soil, Water, and the Politics of Interdependence

In this episode, Yevheniia Havrylenko (Kunsthaus Dahlem) speaks with the artists participating in “Soil & Water”—Johan Thom (who is also the project’s co-curator) and Jessica Ostrowicz—about the ideas underlying the project. The conversation explores the artists’ perceptions of soil and water, as well as how their respective cultural backgrounds have shaped their artistic approaches to these themes.

Participants

► Johan Thom is a South African artist whose work spans sculpture, video, performance, drawing, printmaking, and photography. In addition to his artistic practice, he is an academic—currently serving as an associate professor of fine arts at the University of Pretoria—and is also active as a curator.

As part of the project, Johan Thom presented the work “LH#1” (left heel – the weight of my body in porcelain) in group exhibitions at the NIROX Sculpture Park and at ARUCAD (Cyprus); he also held a solo exhibition of his drawings there titled “Water Diaries,” curated by Başak Şenova.

► Jessica Ostrowicz is a British artist and prison researcher who works in the fields of installation, sculpture, drawing, and film. Her artistic practice—as the artist herself describes it—“explores the concept of home, understood not as a fixed or singular entity, but as a mutable state shaped by memory, longing, and uprooting.”

As part of the project, Jessica Ostrowicz presented the film *Antecedent Wayfinder* in the group exhibition at NIROX Sculpture Park, as well as eggshell drawings on paper from her ongoing series *Pareidolia (Home)* at ARUCAD in Cyprus.

Instagram: jessica.ostrowicz

► Yevheniia Havrylenko is a curator, historian, and specialist in digital communication from Ukraine; she has been working at the Kunsthaus Dahlem since 2022. She is the initiator of the online discussion series *Let’s Talk the Exhibition*.

This is a Zoom event for which prior registration is required.

IN ENGLISH