to know with, what makes our grounds (2024) explores soil as both a cultural material and a living technology. Developed through the Frame Finland × Van Abbemuseum Curatorial Research Fellowship, the project traces agrarian knowledge between Finland and the Netherlands using collective soil sampling as method and medium.

Over six months, nearly one hundred soils were gathered by publics in Finland and the Netherlands—from gardeners to government ministers—and analysed through wet-sieving to separate sand, silt and clay. Each sample revealed the particle structure, mineral content and story of locality. Through its collective making via fieldwork and participatory workshops, soil can be understood not only as a resource but as a record of human and ecological histories.

During Dutch Design Week, contributors returned to collectively make a rammed-earth sculpture from their soils samples, having been on display for 6 months in the exhibition. Drawing on the engineering of river dikes and the long tradition of soil as structural material, the work echoed the morphology of the Oosterscheldekering flood barrier—an iconic Dutch defence against rising seas. The sculpture tested the samples as construction co-material in their own right, layering the loam, clay and sand soils into a tactile counterform to the Netherlands’ managed hydro-systems. After the exhibition, the structure was dismantled and its soils returned to the museum garden, completing a cycle of collection, transformation, and re-grounding.

Finnish Soils >>> collected by Finnish Publics, and Soils Projects. Many thanks to Riikka Latva-Somppi for loaning these for the display