with Marianna Dobkowska, Edith Jeřábková, Rosario Talevi & the Zabriskies
Soil and Friends is an interdisciplinary artistic and research project developed by Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw and PLATO City Gallery of Contemporary Art in Ostrava, curated by Marianna Dobkowska and Edith Jeřábková. The project unfolds across two exhibitions, residencies, and a public programme. Through the practices of the invited artists, Soil and Friends explores the intertwined histories of plants, humans, and non-human beings, various ways of coexisting with and experiencing the world, and the intersections of art, land cultivation, and care.
For the Warsaw exhibition (June–October 2025), Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur und Natur contributed a curated reading room, assembling publications on soil, earth, and care that resonated with the exhibition’s themes and extended its inquiries into a space for reflection.
For the second installment of the exhibition opening in Ostrava in April 2026, architect Rosario Talevi presents Toxic Dust, an artistic survey of Ostrava’s post-mining landscapes. Developed through a two-phase residency at PLATO in dialogue with geomorphologist Jan Lenart, the project traces terrains continuously reshaped not only by more than a century of extraction, but also by the complex processes of abandonment and natural reclamation that have occurred over the decades since.
The evening at Zabriskie brings together the curators and the architect in conversation.
