“From the earth we created you, and into it we will return you, and from it we will extract you another time.” - Holy Quran, Sūrat Tāhā, verse 55.
“EARTH TO EARTH” taps into the collective memory held in materials around us. Mud, composed of earth and water, possesses the broad spectrum of these two elements, creating a duality. It embodies solidity and fluidity, motion and stillness, and permanence and impermanence.
The ability of mud to dissolve and be reformed establishes its material circularity. With its embodied memory of all past forms, the material alludes to shared memories and triggers communal contemplations for the future.
The installation consists of two curved walls built in mudbrick that produce a semi-enclosed space, providing an intimate shelter. Its form represents the relationships of opposites: mud’s earth and water, solidity and fluidity, motion and stillness, memory and imagination, the eternal and the ephemeral, and ultimately, our own life and death.
The visitor is invited to experience the structure in multiple ways, circle around the outside of the curved walls, or enter the central space to pause and reflect. A wooden deck and seating coupled with sounds of recited poetry offer a further invitation to sit, ponder, and contemplate the liminal space between memory and imagination.
