Non-Extractive Mining
2022–
works on paper
plant and fungi ink on paper
Gorredijk, Friesland (NL)
Colour is information. The range of pigments a landscape can yield — from its plants, fungi, bark, and berries — is a direct index of its biodiversity. A rich habitat produces a wide palette. A destroyed one produces almost nothing.
Non-Extractive Mining is a body of ink and watercolour works on paper made entirely from self-made plant and fungi inks, developed during a residency at Stichting Utopa in Friesland. Foraging the surrounding landscape, Finding the Wild extracted pigments from whatever they found — building a palette that runs across browns, yellows, greens, and occasional purples. Red is rare. Blue is almost always what remains.
The works are made in two registers: industrial farming machinery and insects — the forces of extraction and the life it displaces, rendered in the same hand, from the same materials, on the same 50 × 70cm sheets. The colours are currently vibrant, carefully stored. Natural pigments fade with light and time. At some point, most of what is visible now will be gone — leaving only blue.
The series is an ongoing body of work.