The ‘Berl-, Birl-’ series, named after Berlin’s marshland origins, emphasizes overlooked urban elements and fosters deeper interactions between humans and non-humans by using soil chromatography—a photographic process that reveals the unique properties of soils. 

This artistic research, in a broader perspective, explores swamp soil, a dynamic and discordant threshold between land and water, as a material-discursive ground to co-produce knowledge about the earth's agency through the alternative image  making, namely soil chromatography. Swamps serves as a experimental site for observing the interplay between material and non-human that  embody both high biodiversity, ecological significance, the constant transformation of living and non-living entities. Interpreting Karen Barad’s agential realism, here soil chromatography is reimagined not as a  scientific method but as an active, material-discursive practice that provides a conceptual foundation for understanding how the characteristics of the earth are not merely discovered but actively constituted through  specific material interactions, in other words where matter and meaning are co-constituted.


This soil portraits installation was developed during the “What if...?” residency, initiated by the Berlin State Commissioner for Nature Conservation and Landscape Preservation