Regenerative social sculpture

Much art about climate and biodiversity points to the problem. This work goes further: it intervenes. For thirty years, on different continents, the same question has kept returning. Can art help restore the living systems on which we depend, while also strengthening the bonds between people?

From wilderness to city

The first projects took place in remote places, where the tension between nature and society was most visible. Gradually the work shifted to the city. That is no coincidence. Now that insects, birds and plants are disappearing from farmland, the city is becoming an unexpected refuge. With all its bustle and contradictions, it has become an ecological laboratory.

Sculpture, habitat and meeting place

In RefuBees all of this comes together. A BeeTotem is at once sculpture, nesting site, food source and neighbourhood place. Each totem is made for one species of wild bee, with the nesting sites, microclimate and native plants that she needs. Not a general bee-friendliness, but precision: based on research into which species occur where, and on the national standard Basiskwaliteit Natuur.

Something social grows up around the totem. Neighbours who would otherwise never meet look after the totem and the plants together. In new-build neighbourhoods a totem quickly proved to be a shared focal point. And the bee regains an old role: in many cultures she was a messenger between worlds. Now she shows how the city is faring.

One step further

The idea of social sculpture assumed that you can shape society the way you shape an artwork. Regenerative social sculpture goes a step further: reshaping the city ecologically, with art as mediator between species, knowledge and residents. Not only awareness, but restoration you can measure. Not a temporary project, but lasting care in the neighbourhood.

In this way art becomes a form of ecological diplomacy. It translates scientific urgency into something people can do together, on the border between decay and restoration.