Middle Earth

2024

81 cm x 46 cm x 44 cm

Materials:
polystyrene foam, artificial soil, artificial grass, wood

“Middle-earth” is a suspended fragment of land supporting half of a football pitch in reduced scale. The white fence creates the impression of a plot of land torn from the ground and transferred into the exhibition space.

The fragmented nature of the pitch and its suspended position emphasize the unstable status of the playing field, transformed into a local lawn for the selected few. The white lines oscillate between garden decoration and the marking out of rules for a new, opaque game. The white picket fence, as a symbol of the middle-class “American dream”, fully encloses this fragment, leaving the space visible yet symbolically inaccessible.

The title refers to Tolkien’s Middle-earth — a world that arrives at order at the cost of losing its former innocence, while still preserving the appearance of an idyll.