Underground 17

A large, gilded cloth buried by Edith Dekyndt, altered by the months spent under the ground, becomes a living map of the interaction between art and nature. Marked by minerals, roots, bacteria, and insects, the fabric bears the stigmata of time and natural processes that transformed and drew it.

Underground 17 celebrates metamorphosis and time by capturing the aesthetics of decomposition and regeneration. The work transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary, inviting us to contemplate the fragility and resilience of its materials. Dekyndt unearths a beauty in an impermanence on which we rarely shed a light, in which each lesion and destruction of the fabric recounts a story of transformation.

The Pinault Collection showed this work for the first at the Icones exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2023