Soil and Natural Materials as Memories of Devastated Places: Revealing the Power of Fragility in Materials and Landscapes through Phenomenology

Abstract

This article investigates the role of natural materials as embodied memories of devastated places, analyzed through a phenomenological framework that emphasizes the process of unconcealment the revealing of truth through states of material and environmental fragility. Drawing on the works of five contemporary artists: Eva Hesse, Montien Boonma, Richard Long, Kazuo Kadonaga, and Wolfgang Laib. The study examines how decay, transformation, and material dissolution function as mechanisms that disclose the hidden conditions of place.

The analysis identifies three key dimensions: (1) Material fragility, which reveals the intrinsic instability of substances that crack, dissolve, or transform over time, allowing materiality to emerge as a trace of temporal unfolding; (2) Landscape fragility, manifested through marks of walking, cutting, displacement, or erosion, turning the landscape into a field of world disclosure that is accessed through embodied encounters; (3) The memory of devastated places, in which natural materials operate as long-term substrates of change, making visible the latent histories of rupture and disappearance without relying on narrative representation.

The findings suggest that natural and fragile materials function not merely as components of artistic form but serve an ontological role in revealing the shifting relationships between humans, materials, and landscapes threatened in the contemporary world. Rather than signifying weakness, fragility emerges as a productive force of revelation, enabling contemporary art to open spaces for remembrance, recognition, and the re-negotiation of human earth relations within environments marked by loss and transformation.