We are Compost / Composting the We guides you through three separate but entangled works that follow the cyclical processes of composting: first of knowledge, then materials and finally histories, to ask what new kinds of transformation are possible when we read, share, shred, till, test, plant and grow collectively with the land and its soil.

The exhibition features the first UK showing of Asad Raza’s work Absorption, in which cultivators create and nurture 60 tonnes of artificial soil created from recycled and other waste materials. This neosoil is then offered freely to visitors to use for their own domestic and community projects. Gaia Glossary, a research installation curated by Alexandra Toland and Lea Wittich brings together literature, resources, tools and objects encouraging a composting of knowledge into the soil for the growth of new ideas. Finally, Eating the Ancestors, is an interactive installation by artist Désirée Coral following her Colonial Seeds research with the Glasgow Seed Library, focusing on what we inherited from generations past to further understand what can be generated from what already exists and what we can do for the collective WE.

Bios

Asad Raza creates dialogues and rejects disciplinary boundaries in his work, which conceives of art as a metabolic, active experience. Using actions and processes such as soil-making, tennis, and horticulture, his projects create encounters within and beyond the exhibition setting. They have been realised by institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney; Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Serpentine Galleries, London; Kunsthalle Portikus; Metro Pictures, New York; Urbane Kunst Ruhr, Essen; and the Lahore Biennale.

Dr. Alex Toland is dean of studies and professor for arts and research at the Bauhaus University Weimar, where she directs the Ph.D. programme in art and design. She was recently elected chair of the international IUSS Commission on the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Soil Science and has published widely on artistic contributions to soil protection. In her artistic practice, Alex explores social and cultural issues of urban soils and plants and more-than-human relations in the Anthropocene. Her work has been exhibited at Ars Electronica, the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden and Art Laboratory Berlin.

Lea Maria Wittich is an artist currently living and working in Weimar, Germany. She holds an M.F.A. in "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies" from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and is an Artistic Associate at the university. As she studied Fashion Design at the UDK Berlin, her practice is rooted in craft and material processes. In her individual and collective, artistic, theoretical and curatorial work, she explores empathy and global solidarity that expand the boundaries of the humane.

Désirée Coral is an artist born in Quito-Ecuador, she received her MFA degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is currently a Doctoral researcher at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in the University of Dundee in Scotland. Désirée explores and examines early global botanical exchanges from the Americas to the rest of the world and analyses the diversity of relationships generated from those encounters. Désirée is the Glasgow Seed Library’s first artist/researcher in residence at the Contemporary Centre for the Arts in Glasgow. Desirée’s art and research is supported by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities.

CCA Annex

Throughout the exhibition, CCA Annex will host a series of online lectures on the topic of soil with a range of guest speakers.

• 18 Aug, 6pm Telegraphing the Dead through Soil: Rolf Hughes and Rachel Armstrong (performance lecture)
• 25 Aug, 6pm Composting Settler Nationalisms: Mathew Arthur and Reuben Jentink (performance lecture)
• 1 Sept, 6pm Unearthed: Claire Ratinon (lecture and virtual garden tour)
• 8 Sept, 6pm Soil Interfaces and Interactions: Panel discussion with Karmen Franinovic, Roman Kirschner and Duy Bui

Registration or pre-booking is not required for these events, simply open CCA Annex before each event to view.