Ecological Research Installation
Minaminals I (2017) marks the beginning of an extensive ecological and process-based body of work within Kirsten Wechslberger’s artistic practice. First installed during the Prinzessinnengärten Wandelwoche at Gut Hellersdorf in Berlin, the project introduced a research-driven approach that combined sustainable material experimentation, public participation, ecological systems thinking and ephemeral installation practice. What initially appeared as a series of small animal sculptures gradually unfolded into a broader investigation of transformation, interdependence and the fragile relationships between human-made systems and living environments.
The installation consisted of approximately eighty hand-formed sculptures made from a self-developed bioplastic and sand mixture. Snails, birds and snakes were placed directly into raised vegetable beds and garden structures throughout the site. Rather than positioning the sculptures as isolated art objects, the installation embedded them into an already functioning ecosystem. Soil, insects, plants, rain and human interaction became active participants in the work. The sculptures were not designed to remain intact. Their gradual decomposition was an essential part of the artistic process. Wind, moisture, sunlight and microorganisms slowly transformed the material until the works dissolved back into the environment from which they emerged.
This deliberate instability is central to the conceptual framework of Minaminals I. The work challenges traditional understandings of sculpture as permanence, monument or preservation. Instead, it proposes a model of art that behaves more like an ecological organism than a fixed object. The sculptures pass through stages of formation, exposure, decay and reintegration. Their disappearance is not understood as failure or destruction, but as completion. The artwork becomes part of a larger biological cycle in which matter continuously shifts between states of visibility and invisibility.
At the centre of the project lies a broader reflection on ecosystems and coexistence. The chosen animals function symbolically, but not as rigid metaphors. Snails, birds and snakes each occupy specific ecological positions within natural systems. They represent movement, adaptation, vulnerability and interconnectedness. Installed within urban gardening structures, the sculptures create subtle interruptions between cultivated human environments and the more unpredictable dynamics of organic life. Through this interaction, the installation asks how ecological systems sustain themselves, how diversity functions within them and what forms of imbalance emerge when certain elements disappear.
The project also introduces an ongoing interest in “edges” and transitional zones, which later become recurring concepts throughout Wechslberger’s practice. Minaminals I does not occupy the centre of institutional space. It exists within margins: between art and gardening, sculpture and ecology, object and process, public participation and environmental transformation. These unstable border spaces become sites of inquiry. The work suggests that transformation often emerges not from fixed categories, but from porous relationships between systems.
Material research plays a particularly important role within the installation. The bioplastic-sand recipe used for Minaminals I originated in 2012 during the production of The Road Less Travelled at the Goethe-Institut in Namibia. Over several years, the material was continuously refined through experimentation with different natural additives and environmental conditions. During an artist residency in South Australia, the recipe was further developed for the ephemeral installation $Edge, which later received first prize at the Arid Lands Sculpture Festival. By the time Minaminals I was realised in Berlin, the material had evolved into both a sculptural medium and a conceptual statement.
The recipe itself consists entirely of natural ingredients, including starch, water, vinegar, plant-based glycerine and sand. Even the mould-making process reflected ecological considerations through the use of natural latex and plaster rather than silicone. This emphasis on sustainable production methods extends the conceptual concerns of the work into the conditions of its own creation. Material becomes inseparable from ethics. The project does not merely depict ecological themes but attempts to embody them through process and production.
The installation also contains an important participatory dimension. Visitors were invited to contribute their own objects and additions to the evolving environment. Through this gesture, authorship became intentionally destabilised. The boundary between artist, participant and ecosystem remained open and negotiable. Human interaction was treated not as documentation or audience response, but as an active layer within the artwork itself. This participatory structure reflects Wechslberger’s broader artistic approach during this period, in which social engagement increasingly replaced isolated object-making.
A significant aspect of Minaminals I is the relationship between ecological systems and social systems. While the project is grounded in environmental processes, many of its underlying questions parallel concerns visible in Wechslberger’s socially engaged works such as Demarginalization. Both bodies of work investigate how complex systems function, how fragile interdependencies are maintained and what occurs when individual parts are excluded, neglected or destroyed. In this sense, Minaminals can be understood not only as an ecological installation, but as a broader reflection on coexistence, responsibility and collective vulnerability.
The work gained wider visibility through publications and documentation, including a multi-page feature in the December 2017 issue of Flamingo, the inflight magazine of Air Namibia. The article presented the project within the context of sustainable art practices, participatory installation and ecological material research. The publication emphasised the biodegradable nature of the sculptures and described the installation as a public art project concerned with “micro and macro ecosystems,” diversity, recycling and transformation. The visual documentation accompanying the article further highlighted the tactile and process-oriented dimensions of the work: mould-making, collective interaction, installation within garden beds and the gradual merging of sculpture and environment.
Art historically, Minaminals I can be situated within several overlapping fields, including ecological art, sustainable art, process art, participatory installation, site-specific practice and ephemeral sculpture. The project shares affinities with artistic approaches that reject permanence in favour of transformation and that understand artworks as evolving systems shaped by time, environment and interaction. Yet the work also occupies a distinct position through its integration of ecological material research, public participation and long-term conceptual continuity.
Within Wechslberger’s wider practice, Minaminals I became the foundation for a continuing series that later developed into Minaminals II – Earth to Earth, Minaminals III – The Soil We Live Of and eventually works such as Merging Layers. Many conceptual threads that would later become central are already visible here: decomposition as methodology, ecosystems as metaphors for social structures, transformation through instability, and the understanding of materials as living agents rather than passive substances.
Ultimately, Minaminals I is less concerned with producing stable sculptural forms than with creating conditions for transformation. The work proposes that art can participate in ecological cycles rather than remain separate from them. It imagines sculpture not as something preserved against time, but as something that enters time fully. Through decay, interaction and reintegration, the installation becomes a temporary negotiation between humans, materials and environments. What remains is not the object itself, but the trace of a process in which art briefly became part of a living ecosystem.
Kirsten Wechslberger 