Eva Spierenburg explores the relationship between the inner body and its environment. She is fascinated by the way experiences are stored in the body and form a source of knowledge. Her drawings, sculptures, objects and texts express the fluidity that arises between body and environment through our sensory perception.

In On Limits, Spierenburg mainly shows work she made during and after a residency in Iceland. Among the mountains in Iceland, she felt herself becoming increasingly absorbed into the landscape itself. In her art, she tries to hold on to that connection.

Looking at the landscape in Iceland, she saw the bodies of individual beings ultimately merge into the landscape like fossils. At the same time, she began to see the earth as a living body. She experienced the landscape as something that breathes, flows and moves. Admittedly, the body changes at a much faster pace than a mountain, where the earth's layers are formed over centuries. But the similarities are striking: cross-sections of stones reveal colours, structures and shapes that resemble muscles, veins and organs on the inside of our bodies.

Back in the Netherlands, thinking of the earth as a body, the navel stone of Delphi came to mind. According to Greek mythology, this was the centre of the earth. The ancient Greeks imagined the earth as a human body with a navel at its centre, and called the earth “Gaia”.

Spierenburg's presentation shows how earth and body merge and how everything is connected. It includes drawings she made in the Icelandic landscape, as well as work that arose from material research.

Following the invitation to participate in On Limits, Spierenburg contacted VU scientist Dr Sjoerd Kluiving. As a geologist and physical geographer, he is affiliated with the Environmental Humanities Centre, which investigates developments in the Anthropocene by linking knowledge about the Earth to knowledge about humans and culture. During the course of the exhibition, Spierenburg will hold conversations with Kluiving. The work that emerges from these conversations will be added to the presentation as it progresses.