On Sand

Pragmatic Material

Sand occupies an ambiguous position between material presence and linguistic abstraction. To refer to sand is often to strip it of specificity, allowing it to function less as matter and more as a qualifier. This slippage produces a conceptual stagnation between discourse and material reality, in which sand circulates as both substance and metaphor.

This research investigates how sand is categorised, represented, and substituted within hardware stores, approached as vernacular material libraries where industrial logics and DIY practices intersect. Through archival research and material observation, the project traces how sanding operates within economies of substitution, illusion , and finitude. In this sense, sand(ing) becomes a quiet political instrument: masking extraction as neutrality, and rehearsing a culture in which ecological cost is rendered invisible through the aesthetic of the “finished surface”.

This research was presented in SANDSCAPES, a collaborative exhibition based on an invitation, bringing four intersecting practices into dialogue around extraction, landscape transformation, and tactile dilemmas through site-specific investigation and material experiment.

/ Exhibited Kunsthal Extra City Antwerpen, Morpho space as part of the Sint Lucas Research Week 2023 /

/ images by Irma Földényi /