As the book New-Materialism - Ontology, Agency, and Politics states ‘‘It is inevitable, the fact that, as human beings, we inhabit a material world and we continuously experience the severity of matter, despite believing that we have the power and the ability to constantly reconfigure and consume it. Our survival depends second by second on a myriad of changing microorganisms, cosmic forces, and all the physical and biological structures that surround us.’’1 Karen Barad, one of the leading New-materialist researchers, proposes a post-humanist ontology that challenges traditional distinctions between subject and object, human and non-human, nature and culture. The researcher argues that both human and non-human agents are involved in processes of intra-action, where differences emerge through their reciprocal interactions. This concept suggests that there are no isolated entities that exist independently; rather, each entity is constantly shaped by its interactions with the surrounding world.

Throughout history, humans have developed a predominantly representationism perspective towards materials and non-human agents, losing sight of its nature as independent and instead viewing it merely as a industrial tool to manipulate to serve their own purposes and desires.
This representationalist orientation has given rise to a speciesist mode of living, in which ontological and ethical significance is systematically reserved for the human, while materials, other species and non-human agents are positioned as subordinate and expendable. Speciesism, in this sense, operates not merely as a moral bias but as an organising logic that structures our society, perception, knowledge and production. It sustains a western worldview in which non-human entities are denied agency, intentionality, and intrinsic value, thereby legitimising their reduction to raw matter, tools, or commodities. Such a mode of living is reinforced through industrial, scientific, and technological systems that normalise extractive and manipulative relations, framing domination as progress and control as necessity. Consequently, speciesism becomes embedded in the very conditions of existence, shaping how environments are inhabited, how materials are engaged, and how futures are imagined, while foreclosing alternative ways of living grounded in reciprocity, co-dependence, and recognition of more-than-human agency.

In the speculative universe envisioned by post-human theorist and philosopher Donna Haraway in ‘‘Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene’’ (2016), the narrative traces five generations of Camille, a symbiotic being composed of human and monarch butterfly. The story begins around 2025, a period that the writer identifies as the “Great Dithering,” characterised by pervasive anxiety surrounding environmental degradation, mass extinction, extreme climate instability, social fragmentation, and escalating geopolitical conflict.

Within this context emerge the so-called Communities of Compost, communities that dedicate to the construction of alternative species, cultures, economies, rituals, and political frameworks grounded in multi-species kinship, restoring planetary balance. In opposition to extractive paradigms, the compostists prioritise care for marginal, overlooked, and diminished beings, assigning value to what has been erased or rendered invisible. Through such practices, the compostists initiate experimental alliances among humans, animals, and other forms of matter, seeking to recalibrate relationships damaged by successive geological and political epochs: first the Anthropocene, and subsequently the Capitalocene.

Year 2025 has just passed, and this speculative framework could not resonate more with my human experience of the present. Everything around me feels fractured, overstimulated, and perpetually on the verge of collapse; not only within urban and industrial environments, but also across social and affective landscapes. This condition manifests in the fragility of interpersonal relationships, the pervasive precarity characterising my generation, and the cognitive and emotional states through which we navigate everyday life. Young minds are increasingly saturated by accelerated temporalities, constant mediation, and diffuse anxieties, while feelings are fragmented and rendered unstable by persistent exposure to uncertainty and systemic pressures. Together, these material, social, and psychological dimensions form an interconnected field of dislocation, wherein environmental degradation, social alienation, and affective exhaustion mutually reinforce one another.

Reality no longer presents itself as a coherent narrative, but rather as a constellation of glitches: overlapping crises, unstable identities, genocides, and systems that have ceased to function while continuing to persist. Attempts to situate myself within this landscape only intensify a lack of belonging and a sense of instability and displacement.

From this condition arises a critical question: should I refuse this reality, or should I recognise it and reassessing it from my body’s potentialities in relation to matter? While refusal offers the appeal of distance and negation, it risks becoming inert. Rethinking, by contrast instead, requires sustained engagement with humanity’s worse fears and with the discards of my present. I therefore choose neither to idealise chaos nor to escape it, but to work from within it; dismantling, reassembling, and testing its limits. If clarity is no longer attainable, responsibility becomes the operative imperative: to look again, to think again, and to imagine alternative configurations from existing conditions.

In recent years, my artistic practice has focused on examining complex relationships between urban space, living beings, and speculative scenarios, often engaging with alternative and post- catastrophe urban and environmental imaginaries.

During studio practice, sculpture functions as an apparatus for generating new narratives through processes of stratification, interference, and material transformation. This methodology finds its primary expression in installation, understood not as a static object but as a multi-sensory environment and evolving ecosystem.

These installations emerge from the convergence of industrial components, organic matter, and urban residues collected from everyday contexts. Discarded materials are subjected to assemblage within sculptural processes of modeling, reactivation, and moulding, resulting in hybrid corporeal entities. Through acts of recomposition, the work operates as a shared device of future memory and contemporary archival and representation, interrogating how material engagement contributes to knowledge production and the formation of collective consciousness. Particular emphasis is placed on the agency of neglected or devalued materials and their potential to foster awareness, cognitive adaptability, and ethical responsibility in relation to current socio-economic conditions, foregrounding speculative modes of living-with as both a critical and generative practice.

1.New Materialism - Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edit by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, Duke University Press, Durham & London, 2010

Works and Installations

The Post-material archive 03, Venice Pavillion, 61st Edition of Biennale di Venezia: In minor keys, Venice (ITA), metal scaffoldings, silicon, 3D printed resin, laser cut PVC, recycled and waste materials, silicon pigments and acrylic paint, mixed technique, variable sizes, 2026
Ph. Elena Andreato and Osvaldo Di Pierantonio

The Post-material archive 02, Installation, Contemporary Cluster in collaboration with Idea Murate Park, Florence (ITA), metal scaffoldings, silicon, sand, 3D printed resin, PVC pipes, laser cut PVC, recycled and waste materials, silicon pigments and acrylic paint, robotic dog,mixed technique, variable sizes, 2025
Ph. Leonardo Morfini

The Post-material Archive 01, Installation for ULTRAUMANO - performance by Nicola Galli - TIR Danza, Almagià, Ravenna (ITA), Scaffold tower, metal, sand, resin, moss, recycled and waste materials, acrylic colors, enamel, mixed technique, variable sizes, 2025

Il Peso del Vuoto, Contemporary Cluster x MAREC Museo, San Severino Marche (ITA),Group Show, Site-specific installation, missing 3d-Print, plaster, silicon rubber, pigment, tow straps, 3d printing and casting, variable sizes, 2024

It Doesn’t Matter, UAL Chelsea College of Arts, London, (UK), Installation, Scaffold tower, metal, cement dust, sand, rubber, resin, moss, concrete, recycled and waste materials, acrylic colors, enamel, mixed technique, variable sizes, 2024

Rambling Matter, REA Art Fair, Milan (ITA), Installation, building scarfles, plants, moss, iron, resin, concrete, recycled materials, acrylic, enamel, mixed technique, variable sizes, 2023

Worn Out Lullaby, Manoteca, Bologna Art City 2023, (ITA), Installation, building scarfles, plants, moss, iron, concrete, recycled materials, acrylic, enamel, mixed technique, variable sizes, 2023

Build Yourself, p420 gallery, Bologna (ITA), Installation, building scarfles, iron, concrete, cardboard, PVC pipes, recycled materials, paraffin, acrylic, enamel, plastic, moss, mixed technique, variable sizes, 2022