Field

Size: 180 x 585 x 120 cm
Upcycled bottleglass; coldworking, fusing
Painted wood and plywood
Photo: Mardo Männimägi
Miron Violet bottles donated by MUSHEEZ
The work belongs to the collection of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design.

The project “Dark Ground” (curated by Maarja Mäemets, HOP Gallery, 3–30 October 2024) took space — its potential and its meanings — as its starting point. Within this framework, I arrived at a distilled expression shaped by my deep connection to the earth: to the soil, the field, the ground that carries us. It also grew out of a rising sense of anxiety and concern for the land that has taken root in me over recent years.

The extraction of metals and fuels from the earth, their transformation into war machines and weapons of destruction, and the resulting devastation — the overturning of nature, the senseless waste — fill me with an ever-deepening anguish. I feel it almost physically, as though my own body were suffering together with the earth.

My work “Field” was born out of this feeling; it seemed to grow from within me, almost of its own accord. It is as if issues such as soil erosion, leaching, chemical use, and the exhaustion of nature had not already been heavy enough to bear, even before the war. I might say that I had no real intention to make this work — rather, I was like the soil from which it emerged. The seeds must have been there all along.

The vertical orientation of the piece creates an association with a painting, or perhaps a mirror. I like the idea that a viewer, wishing to examine the details near the lower part of the work, must bow slightly — as if in reverence to the earth. The vertical position also reflects a thought that has stayed with me: if I myself were the earth, treated as it is, I would long ago have risen upright and refused to bear humankind any longer.