This review of Jenine Marsh’s solo exhibition at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG) evaluates the dominant themes in the artist’s material and conceptual oeuvre. I address Marsh’s ongoing interest in utopian gestures, coin-wishing, and her critique of capitalist acceleration, framing these themes in the context of her immersive approach to sculptural installation at KWAG. I also consider how her past project, Wellspring (2023) at Nathan Phillips Square, established a precedent of immersive installation in Marsh’s practice that engages audiences to reflect on social structures they too, are implicated within.
This paper critically examines the EU’s “Soil Deal for Europe” through a feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) lens through the exploration of how digital tools such as the EU soil dashboard and Living Labs shape our understanding of soil health. We argue that current soil governance relies on technocratic, data-driven frameworks that obscure ecological complexity and marginalize embodied, local knowledge. By analyzing the sociotechnical assemblage of soil indicators, policy documents, and citizen science platforms, the authors reveal how soil is rendered legible for management but stripped of its relational and living dimensions. We advocate for a care-based, pluralistic approach to soil knowledge one that embraces uncertainty, centers more-than-human relationships, and reimagines soil not as a resource to be controlled but as a dynamic partner in ecological stewardship.
This book review examines Timothy Mitchell’s The Alibi of Capital as a sustained intervention into contemporary debates on climate crisis, economic growth, and political responsibility. The book offers an incisive reconceptualization of economic growth as a political alibi that legitimizes extraction through appeals to the future. Mitchell’s account compellingly explains how responsibility for ecological harm is displaced rather than outright denied, helping to clarify why climate awareness so often coincides with political inertia. While the book’s historical breadth and conceptual precision offer a powerful framework for understanding the temporal logic of capitalist extraction, the review also considers the limits of its explanatory reach, particularly concerning sites of rupture, resistance, and alternative futures. Nevertheless, The Alibi of Capital remains a richly generative work whose analytic clarity and historical depth significantly sharpen how scholars and critics think about notions of time, responsibility, and the politics of climate crisis.
Lengthy efforts are often made to preserve art in a frozen “original” state, to stall nature’s processes of deterioration, but artists are creating works intended to decay, (d)evolve, and embrace death. When soil occupies the white cube through the works of contemporary artists Precious Okoyomon, Daniel Lie, and Delcy Morelos, notions of mortality and the passing of time are inescapable. In their hands, soil no longer functions as a medium for humans to tame and exercise grand, almost divine, control over, but a reminder that nature’s cycles of rot and regeneration are inevitable. By embracing soil and its abject reminders of death, contemporary artists are proposing alternative ways of relating to nature that subvert settler-colonial modalities.
Boiling Rocks is an art project exploring soil remediation, inspired by the community science initiative Prospering backyards (Pb) in Southeast Los Angeles. Pb addressed lead contamination from a battery smelter, involving collaborations between art, science, and community. The project provided free soil health workshops and testing, leading to the identification of zeolites as a method to reduce lead bioavailability. Boiling Rocks translates this scientific journey into art, with pieces like mosaics from contaminated soil, microscopic imagery of zeolites encapsulating lead, disintegrating sculptures for soil remediation, and prints of testing sites.
