elise-eeraerts.be

Celtic lore speaks of a mystical Otherworld, the home of sprits and divinities and our beloved dead. It has been described as a realm that exists alongside our own, as a heavenly land beyond the sea or beneath the ground. According to legend, there exist places on Earth where the thresholds between our world and the Otherworld touch. Known as “thin places,” these are sites where the membrane of reality is at its most fragile.

Over the centuries, bogs have been counted among such thin places. A wetland ecosystem, they are characterized by soft, spongy, peat-rich soil. Peat forms from slowly accumulated plant matter that does not fully decompose in waterlogged, oxygen-poor conditions. Neither land nor water, bogs have been imagined throughout history portals, into which people, animals, and objects are swallowed whole and never returned.

Favoring cold northern climates, bogs have long been a feature of the Irish landscape. Artist Elise Eeraerts and architect Roberto Aparicio Ronda first encountered one during their residency at West Cork’s Glenkeen Garden in 2025, though the artist duo had found themselves knee-deep in wetlands before. Their 2023 exhibition at STUK Leuven, Like snakes, the roots of trees, coil themselves from rock and sand, emerged from research conducted with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Kirkpatrick Marsh, Maryland, US. In a video Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda produced for the exhibition, environmental scientists from the research center conjecture how plant and animal species will respond to the marsh’s changing terrain and its imminent, climate-change-driven ecological collapse.

As the artists delved into the wetlands around Glenkeen Garden, they wondered how people find safety and sustenance in indeterminate spaces, notably between the wilderness and the strictures of modern life. In the narrative composed by Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda, a man recounts life on a bog ridden with disease and death. He describes a place where “light doesn’t travel far” and a home where, “no matter how many times we try to lay stones or spread dry turf...[t]he bog finds its way in.” Wetness seeps through the floors and walls. Slowly but inexorably, life closes in around him, while the earth churns quietly below.

Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda began to seek out individuals who have staked their lives along bogs, independent of public utilities such as electricity, water, gas, and sewer systems. But those who live off grid can be difficult to reach. Many have no official address or reside in structures erected without formal permits. The interviews accompanying the artists’ new film explore the intimate reflections and varied motivations of those who have chosen to detach themselves from an increasingly frayed social fabric. In voices the artists have deliberately estranged, speakers describe a world where nature always reasserts itself. One describes waking in a caravan so cold your “kidneys will be aching.” Others recount water rising through the floor or clinging for dear life after gusts of wind tear the tin roof from a shelter. Yet there is genuine wonder and gratitude as well. “Every morning waking up here realizing the life that I've created and seeing where I live and how I live. I couldn't describe how happy that makes me feel,” says one. These are the experiences, perhaps, of living in a thin place, of life brushing against death’s membrane.

What emerges from these conversations is a shared search for refuge. Both a sanctuary for living in the present and a shelter from the future. Two interwoven voices, one more alarmist, the other more spiritual, bring together contrasting understandings of being in the world. Their stories unfold alongside vivid close-ups of bog flora. The camera lingers on delicate violet flowers, known as Devil’s-bit scabious, shivering in the breeze or on the intricate reflections within a single dewdrop.

Buried within a bog’s folds of decay and beneath crushing layers of wet, compressed earth lie distilled records of deep time: pollen, artifacts, human bodies. A longing draws us to them. On August 30, 1856, US-American naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal, “It is vain to dream of a wilderness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream.” As unfolds in Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda new installation, a bog is that place within ourselves where the growing dread of our world’s future touches a yearning for possible others.

By Amanda Sarroff

Refuge and Fortune

Glenkeen Variations, Crespo foundation, Frankfurt, Germany, 2026
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda

Terras/Terrace (Dieren)

IJsselbiënnale, Dieren, the Netherlands, 2025
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda, performance by Asako Iwama, photos by Titus Reith

The Starlight Dims Its Blissful Gaze, The Springs Are Steaming—We Descend in Haze

Kunstverein Arnsberg, Germany, 2025
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda, photos by Michel Ptasinski

Below Ground, Beyond Earth (Klarewal)

Archeological site of Klarewal, Alveringem, Belgium, 2025
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda, photos by Jeroen Verrecht

Future Nature

Festival of Future Nows, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, 2025
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda, supported by Flanders State of the Art

Folly (Vase)

Germinal, Evere, Brussels, Belgium, 2025
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda

Lost Spire (Belfry of Bruges)

Gouden Boomstoet, Bruges, Belgium, 2024
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda

Swamps, moors and wetlands: in both historical and contemporary stories, they are often the symbolic setting for sinister events; a place of mischief and mystery. For instance, the ghost lights created by the slow ignition of swamp gasses often fulfills the role of spirits in sagas and myths because of its mysterious form. Or think of the macabre phenomenon of bog corpses being mummified by the preservative effect of the anaerobic peat soil.
At the same time, wetlands are associated not only with death, but above all with life. They harbor a very diverse ecosystem that plays an important role in the context of climate change as carbon sinks and storm buffers.
The landscape Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda create in their exhibition is inspired by the Kirkpatrick Marsh in Maryland in the United States. In this marsh, scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) are studying how plant, microbial and animal species respond to fluctuations in CO2, temperature, nitrogen, methane and sea level rise. Global climate changes are manipulated in architecturally specific and automated infrastructures to replicate the situation of the next century, in anticipation of a new reality.
The overall installation ‘like snakes, the roots of trees, coil themselves from rock and sand’ connects parallels about an uncertain future with impressions of an undisguised nature and humans seeking a place in it.
Stunning aerial images combined with close-ups of lush plant and animal life form the visual basis of the film Moors and Mires/Kirkpatrick Marsh. Several interview clips feature scientists working in Kirkpatrick Marsh. They give insight into the content of their work and their findings but also share their experiences about the specific conditions in which they carry out their research. Their facts and fictions, data and stories, both equally find a home in the beautiful images of the marsh. At various points, the documentary character tilts towards a more dark, computer-generated fictional world; an “altered reality” that provides the setting in which tales of aliens, monsters and death find their natural habitat.
The spatial elements in the exhibition can be understood as visual echoes from the marsh, as in a dreamy vision from the future. The boardwalks, beautifully rendered via drone footage, take a vertical course at certain points and seem to melt or morph in other places. ‘Phragmites australis’, an invasive grass species originally from Europe, can grow at a top speed of one meter per week in Spring, quickly replacing all other vegetation. Phragmites australis have existed for hundreds of years but have only been a real problem in the Kirkpatrick marsh the last thirty to fifty years because of the speed at which they become all-pervasive: ‘some plants will be winners, others will be losers’. The magic and spiritual dimension that nature evokes is alluded to by the same colored light in the video as the lamps that cause the young ‘phragmites australis’ to grow in the dark. Furthermore, we recognize the octagonal structures and cubic elements that provide accurate measurements in the simulation experiments of the future in the Kirkpatrick marsh using CO2 measuring equipment and blowers. In turn, in their octagonal structures, Eeraerts and Aparicio Ronda measure the CO2 concentration and soil temperature around the plants using SERC’s equipment. Lastly, the cubes house the sound system that provides the soundtrack in the exhibition.
In the exhibition, the gloomy science predictions merge seamlessly with the atmosphere created in folklore, sagas and myths in this thought-provoking installation that gets under your skin. At the same time, the conclusion of one of the scientists is as sobering as it is soothing: ‘It might not necessarily be good for humans, but earth itself is going to persist.’

Like snakes, the roots of trees, Coil themselves from rock and sand

STUK, Leuven, Belgium, 2023
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda, photos by Joeri Thiry STUK

Clay (Sint-Niklaas)

railway brigdes, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, 2023-2024
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda

Saint-Jean-Port-Joli

ENE, Canada, 2022
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda

Carboniferous Collapse

Le Mat, France, 2022
photos by Grégory Valton

In this site-specific installation, energy and more specifically carbon cycles are conceptualized. Its spatial structure is exhibited on a peat bog, called Bargerveen. Peat is still being extracted and used as fuel. Usually logged under water and out of reach of oxygen (O), it has a very high carbon (C) content which is released in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere when drying/burning it. Preserving bogs is important for decarbonization, in fighting climate change. For this project, carbon was extracted from local peat samples, and has been synthesized into a diamond, a symbolic way to store carbon. This diamond, being made of earth, contrasts with the human history of the site. Peat bogs in the Northern Netherlands used to be inhabited by people in extreme poverty. Their short-lived, vernacular dwellings are referenced by the resemblance of “C (Bargerveen)” to a tent in its materials - carbon fiber and textile - and its nomadic, modular design.

C (Bargerveen)

Into Nature, biennial art expedition, Drenthe, the Netherlands, 2021

Possible Patterns

Variations in Earth, Valerie Traan Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium, 2021
in collaboration with Grond Studio, photos by Cinzia Romanin

Sand (Lommel)

commissioned work in public space, Lommel, Belgium, 2020-2021
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda

Niseko

Niseko, Japan, 2019
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda, photo by Yoshisato Komaki

Ritual Reality

Solo, Les Tanneries, France, 2018
photos by Aurélien Mole & Guillaume Blanc

“Recursive Volumes” consists of a large, spatial sculpture and a series of small sculptures; all made of the same raw material: clay. The process of transforming nature, the clay earth, into a built structure can hardly be more direct. The technique requires a manual procedure of shaping the clay walls, almost as if the building would be a vast enlargement of a piece of pottery. The small objects consist of the exact same shape that is established by the space. Ten times smaller, their repetition in a much smaller scale causes a recursion within the totality of this work. This eventually implies a scaling operation that could occur infinitely. Sizes and scales of spaces and objects are inherently connected to their functionality and identity. So it is an important factor for interpreting elements in our field of perception. In “Recursive Volumes” the objects were eventually fired inside the built space. Its inside volume functioned as an embracing and insulating shell for the fire to take place. The firing is a performative, ritualistic act. After the burning process is over, the clay objects are fire hardened, but also the clay space itself is transformed into a ceramic substance.

Recursive Volumes (video stills)

Atelier Calder, France, 2018

Intruder (Stretched Cube)

Festival of Furure Nows, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, 2017

‘Baelo Claudia’ explores how an object relates to the foundation of all landscape: the ground and the sky. A 45 meter long balloon was specifically fabricated for a performative experiment at the archeological site of Baelo Claudia in Spain where the balloon was subsequently released into the sky. From then on, the sculpture appeared abstract in mid-air, no longer related to a specific context on earth. In the air, the sky acted like a blank, or blue, canvas. Moreover, helium gradually expands at higher altitudes, causing the shape of the work to transform from soft to linear geometry. This concluding act transformed into a dynamic abstract image, in which it was difficult to determine whether the object was tiny or enormous.

Baelo Claudia (video stills)

Performance, Cadiz, Spain, 2017

Floating Identity

Horst Arts & Music Festival, Belgium, 2016

Bumbu

Thread, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Senegal, 2016

‘Burning Mass’ consists of the remains of a modular brick sculpture and a film following the making of it, as a vast site-specific sculpture in its original, natural environment.
Intended to be monumental in scale, the sculpture ‘Burning Mass’ consists of more than a thousand massive handmade clay components, which were burned in the landscape through the traditional method of the brick clamp. The inner remains of ‘burning mass (blocks)’ were joined together because of the extreme heat during the burning process.
The film ‘Burning Mass’ focuses attention on the act of creating the brick components and the process through which knowledge of their core substance and mass is gained. Going beyond documentation, the film is meant to be a starting point and conduit for interrelating human construction and nature in a broader sense. By showing the process, the narrative questions the past and future of these tactile actions of creation and examines our gradual social alienation from ritualistic traditions.

Burning Mass (Blocks)

Aalst, Belgium, 2016

Fire Pit (Blocks)

Gantrisch, Switzerland, 2015

Stretched Cube (Spast)

Future Nows, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2014, Museum M, Leuven, Belgium, 2012

Complementary Volumes

Grey Sheep, Berlin, 2014

The roof of the Neue Nationalgalerie is supported solely by eight columns around its perimeter. This design allows for a structure whose enormous interior space is nearly entirely open. plan 2: octagonal prisms – reconstructing a column reacts against this spatial arrangement by erecting a column within the museum’s interior. The work, which is lightweight and movable, consists of thin brass bars and metal cables arranged in a system of tensional integrity – or “tensegrity” as it was named by Buckminster Fuller. Tension between the elements balances the bars and the cables, giving volume to the structure and allowing plan 2: octagonal prisms – reconstructing a column to take form. Performative as well as sculptural, the work is repeatedly de- and reconstructed during the course of the exhibition, each time being moved around within the space. Nearly touching the ceiling, the object articulates and makes explicit the scale of the Neue Nationalgalerie’s massive open space.

plan 2: octagonal prisms - reconstructing a column

Future Nows, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2014

Reflected Directions (Labyrinth)

Passages, North Station, Brussels, 2013

plan 4(1) (scale 1:2) - pigeon tower Lo

Lo-Reninge, Belgium, 2012
in collaboration with Roberto Aparicio Ronda

plan 4(4) (scale 1:5)

Ghent, Belgium, 2011

‘If an object is made with an unclear intention concerning its content, people might see nothing - or they see buildings, animals, objects from outer space (the future), temples (the past), small daily objects ... in it. In the work 'Mäntsälä [video]' the participants of the project Mäntsälä speak about their ideas about the meaning of the object that was made together. The sculpture had been dug out of the earth in seven stages: in each stage a certain amount of earth was removed. The sculpture measures 150 cm x 300 cm x 400 cm. Its shape at excavation on 31st of May 2008, constitutes the first form in the continuity of plans and shapes.

Mäntsälä (27th of April, 4th of May, 25th of May, 31st of May 2008)

Finland, 2008