Materials function as memory; they can reveal a past, offer insight into the present, and contribute to the imagination of possible futures. Following the movement of materials, an image of humans emerges. This year's focus is on sedimentation: the process by which loose material is deposited by water or wind. By accumulation and settling, information can be held, preserved, and stored. Today's material culture is tomorrow's archaeology. The soil reveals traces from millennia ago until just a few years back, but both carry different connotations. Where does the line lie between valuable and valueless, old and new, and between heritage and waste? What makes certain things last while others decay and are forgotten?

The presentation Muddy Minds featuring Jumana Manna, Alexandra Hunts, Matilde Yilmaz and Magali Reus is centered around a geo-archaeological excavation. Layers of sand, peat, loam, and (fired) clay in the profiles are formed across different timescales by natural, human, or combined processes. The Saalian ice age, sea-level rise, land reclamation, flooding, geo-engineering, land consolidation, and present-day use converge into a single image. Layer by layer, geo-archaeologist Ella Egberts and REST unravel the many appearances of our surrounding through preserved seeds, lugworms, reed peat, and sand pits. Similarly the exhibited artworks interrogate the entanglement of our ecological, political, and social fabric. Both archaeology and art make visible the value systems and expose the ongoing process of selecting what we preserve, forget, or discard.

Muddy Minds
1 August – 12 September 2026
Friday – Saturday, 12 – 17h
REST – Wieldyk 8, Mirns
Admission free

Workshop with geo-archeologist Ella Egberts
Saturday 8, 15, 22 August 2026
Admission free
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Workshop-dinner with the land / tickets
Saturday, 22 August 2026, 14:00–20:00 /
Sunday, 23 August 2026, 14:00–20:00

REST01, dating unknown
peat, clay, sand, driftwood, shards, pollen, seeds, 3000 x 1500 x 220 cm

Where the IJsselmeer now lies, two thousand years ago lay the equally freshwater Lake Flevo. Plants at its edges decomposed under wet, oxygen-poor conditions, resulting in a deep black layer of peat. Centuries later, the former Zuiderzee covered this former bay with a layer of marine clay at every storm tide or tidal surge, a fine sediment that could settle evenly over the undiked peat. After the land reclamation of 1632, the area was drained, and a layer of sand above the clay, possibly through later deposition, the raising of ground level, or the working of the newly won polder land.

REST02, dating unknown

clay, sand, lugworms, pollen, seeds, rubble, 500 x 180 x 200 cm

At the bottom lies reddish sand, indicating an open tidal zone within the former bay, where currents were too strong for peat formation but suitable for bottom-dwelling life such as lugworms and shellfish. The reddish color points to iron oxidation caused by fluctuating water levels and oxygen conditions due to tides or possibly later drainage. Above this, clay settled during further silting up of the bay. After the land reclamation of 1632, a worked topsoil layer containing rubble at the top indicates later habitation, construction, or earthworks on the drained polder land.