In the garden of the Finnish Institute at Athens, artist Jenny Marketou has created a living habitat out of the scarred soil of Thessaly. Her new work, “Fairground of Earthed Stories,” is meant to be left to the elements, slowly worn down by rain and microorganisms. The result is a kind of sculpture designed to eventually become a future archaeological trace of humanity’s connection with nature.
Earth That Carries Memory
The installation is built from layers of clay, soil, river sand, and cob, a traditional mix of earth, straw, and water. These materials carry the ecological and cultural history of Thessaly, the central Greek region devastated by Storm Daniel’s floods in 2023. They come from flood-stricken areas, the Pineios River, Lake Karla, and archaeological sites.
Marketou sees these materials as living archives of memory and human activity, an idea that echoes political theorist Jane Bennett’s concept of “vibrant matter.” Placed in an urban garden in the heart of Athens, the installation works at once as living art, a shelter, and a piece of infrastructure.
From Creator to Host
Marketou said she designed the work as an imaginary habitat, a playground for birds, insects, and the garden’s plants, as well as a fragment of future archaeology. Its textured surfaces and hollows are meant to invite different forms of life to move in.
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As insects, roots, and microorganisms become co-creators of the piece, she said her own role shifts from creator to host. Her job is to set up the conditions for a shared existence that she neither can nor wants to control. By handing the work over to nature and to non-human life, she aims to take humans out of the center of the picture.
Erosion as a Form of Life
For Marketou, erosion is not necessarily destruction. Instead, she sees it as part of the natural life of the material and its collaboration with the atmosphere and other living things. Water, wind, roots, and microorganisms are constantly reshaping the earth, she noted, and the sculpture’s successive layers leave visible marks of different moments in time. The life of the work, she said, lies in this interaction, in decay and constant renewal, grounded in a broader sense of interdependence and care.
Beyond the Monument
Asked whether the sculpture is a monument to disaster or a passage toward renewal, Marketou said the work deliberately moves away from the monumental, resource-heavy practices of modernist and industrial art. Instead, it takes an ecologically sensitive approach that treats matter as alive, dynamic, and perishable.
She said she is not interested in making art that simply talks about ecology. Rather, she wants to create a sculptural setting that actively helps build ecological relationships. In this way, the piece challenges our human-centered view of the world and invites visitors to experience nature differently, as the sculpture gradually becomes a small ecosystem of its own.
A Message for Future Archaeologists
If an archaeologist of the future were to discover the work, Marketou said she would want them first to wonder where this strange object came from, who made it, and how. Its layers and organic textures give it a timeless quality, as if it could belong to any era.
The central question she hopes it raises is what it would mean if the objects we leave behind were not monuments to human civilization, but traces of our efforts to learn how to live alongside other species.
“Fairground of Earthed Stories” opens on Tuesday at the Finnish Institute at Athens, 16 Zitrou Street.