The mountain within us

2026
Hand-tufted rug, 120 x 150 cm

The mountain within us aims to understand stony landscapes through kinship, through what we share with it, rather than through what sets us apart. Starting point of the work was the question: what connects us, humans, to stony landscapes? The answer has proven to be straightforward: minerals, in the forms of stones. The connection between humans and stone is twofold: chalk stone landscapes are composed of skeletons of sea animals that condensed into stone over eons. Simultaneously, human and animal bodies produce stones in the form of bladder and kidney stones. 

In The mountain within us, a body stone from an animal has been hand-tufted and represented as a landscape in itself. The work invites us not to view stone landscapes as something external, but as something that is already present within us. In doing so the work plays with the Anthropocene hypothesis: will we – humanity – form the soil, the rock strata of the future?