Microbiome Rift, an outdoor sculpture situated on the Arts Quad, dissolves boundaries between internal and external, contained and container, animate and inanimate. A variety of vegetal forms—including cast vegetables and their decomposing originals—are nested within a porous structure made of a steel armature and a paper clay skin informed by local natural fibers. Evocative of the vexed state of global food production—a world in which produce is increasingly abstract to the people who consume it, a world in which the organic may not be enough—yet playful in tone, Microbiome Rift is a celebration of the small vegetal characters silently doing their part to hold our changing society together.

Grace Sachi Troxell (US)

Grace Sachi Troxell is currently an MFA candidate at Cornell University. She received her BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College and a Postgraduate Certificate in Painting from the Glasgow School of Art. She has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, The Studios at MASS MoCA, Willapa Bay, and The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China.