World Environment Day: On Earth, In Body
OLÚ x UNDP Innovation Centre
On Earth, In Body: Memory, Matter, and the Sacred Act of Return
To mark World Environment Day, I turn to the silent, grounding language of clay, earth made form, to reflect on the deep entanglement between self, story, and the environment. Each of these sculptural works embodies a conversation with nature: as healer, archive, and ancestor.
Whether born from a moment of emotional rupture, an instinctive return to wilderness, or a slow meditation on breath, the works trace journeys of inner and outer ecology. Clay here is not just material, it is memory in sediment, scar, and skin. It teaches us to process overwhelm, to listen for what’s buried, and to hold space for transformation.
In the presence of the climate crisis and cultural amnesia, these works offer grounding, not as retreat, but as ritual. A way to return to the earth, to remember that the body is an extension of the landscape, and that healing the planet begins with listening to its rhythms. On this day, we should not simply celebrate nature, we should recommit to it. Through clay, let’s remember: the environment is not outside of us. It is in us, around us, and must be held sacred.
Sprout
Clay, Glaze, Beads | 2024
Sprout is a vessel of transition rooted in the legacy of clay as a witness material and stretching toward ecologies of renewal. Its form speaks to a generational language of clay as feminine, life-giving, and sustaining. The pot-like base evokes ancestral grounding, while the extended neck, adorned with mushroom-like growths, becomes a symbol of resilience, organic persistence, and the possibility of regrowth after rupture.
Its earthy palette – black, vintage green, and yellow-to-cream flows like mycelium or roots, recalling unseen yet vital networks: ancestral, environmental, and intellectual. The embedded beads within the mushroom forms transform adornment into memory and mutation, a meditation on evolution and adaptability within nature and culture.
In the context of environmental reflection and patronage, Sprout holds a quiet provocation: what do we foster, protect, and pass on? It questions systems of consumption and celebrates clay’s humble power to carry both beauty and decay. The piece honors women who shaped clay as keepers of land and story, while branching into interdisciplinary forms that echo ecological interdependence.
To sprout is to:
- to produce life
- to develop new parts
- to grow anew
- to yield fruit
- to continue the phase of life
Sprout holds the seed and the question. Suspended in an in-between space, it is both witness and instigator, a vessel for becoming that reminds us, in the face of collapse, nature still insists on life.
The Earth Knows the Soul (2024)
Clay, Metal, Wax | 16” x 14”
The Earth Knows the Soul is a sculptural meditation on grounding, born from a return to wilderness and shaped by the silent wisdom of caves, rock art, ancient stones, and relic-like terrain. Echoing both bone and rock, its form evokes what is both bodily and geological; fragile yet enduring.
Painted in earthy hues of blue, ochre, and iron-red, the surface resembles sediment or scar tissue, suggesting layers of memory and erosion. Hollowed sections act like breathing points, portals into histories of rupture, repair, and embodied remembering.
Suspended on steel rods like unearthed relic, the piece sits between exposure and reverence. Its industrial base contrasts the organic form, underscoring tensions between nature and system, preservation and decay. The form hovers between bone and stone, artifact and witness. Each hollow is a wound and a window. Each scar, a sediment of time.
The Earth Knows the Soul is not just form, it is revelation in motion. A call to remember that what grounds us is not only beneath us, but within us
Under Water (2024)
Clay, Wax | H 12” x W 12”
Under Water channels self-discovery through social interaction, capturing the emotional dissonance of being in a large gathering while feeling internally distant. The anxious, disoriented sensation akin to being submerged finds voice in clay, transforming inner turbulence into tactile reflection. The work becomes a way of breathing beneath the surface, where words fail and form begins.
Born amid an active social trigger, the piece explores clay’s ability to hold emotional residue to transmute overwhelm into something grounded, material, and expressive. In shaping the clay, the artist reshapes their experience, allowing anxious energy to move through the hands rather than remain trapped in the chest. This act becomes both ritual and repair.
What begins as internal rupture finds rhythm through clay – soft, yielding, yet strong.
Each mark on the piece follows the steady cadence of box breathing: inhale, hold, exhale, hold. These sculptural incisions act as pulses of calm, embodied breaths etched into form. Through this deliberate repetition, the object becomes both a vessel and a meditation, a place where tension is held, and then released.
Here, the perceived fragility of clay is reimagined as strength. Breath becomes structure. Stillness becomes form. And in this quiet choreography of hands and material, Under Water becomes an ode to resilience, thr art of breathing through what overwhelms us.
Here, the perceived fragility of clay is reimagined as strength. Breath becomes structure. Stillness becomes form. And in this quiet choreography of hands and material, Under Water becomes an ode to resilience, thr art of breathing through what overwhelms us.
More than a personal story, it transforms into a metaphor for the collective emotional state of a world in crisis. The “underwater” sensation, in this light, mirrors the psychological weight many feel in the face of climate change, pollution, and ecological collapse. Just as the artist channels personal anxiety into creation, the work urges us to respond to environmental anxiety not with paralysis, but with mindful action
