The glow was never theirs to take

In this installation I investigate the lingering impact of colonial resource extraction on natural environments and living bodies. A holographic river runs through dark banks, scattered with branches, stones, and shells that have been ruptured to reveal their shiny interiors. As modern society mines minerals and harvests forests to fuel technological progress and comfort, I ask whose progress is this really for? At what cost? And who is left to regenerate what remains?

These questions extend beyond land. Just as colonial systems have historically extracted from ecosystems, they’ve suppressed the existence of bodies, identities, and communities deemed inconvenient or expendable. Indigenous, queer and marginalized communities have responded with their own models of radical care, mutual support, sharing ancestral knowledge, and the insistence on flourishing despite oppression.

This work proposes that the tools built for survival (solidarity, interdependence, the refusal to be depleted) are not just tools for a community; they’re a blueprint for our relationship to the earth itself. To care for each other and to care for the land are gestures rooted in the same intention.

The installation was exhibited at Queertropolis, a queer urban utopia where identity, art, and community merged at Treehouse NDSM. Funded by AFK, part of Pride Art Route and World Pride 2026 Amsterdam.