SOFT GROUND
September 2026

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SOFT GROUND: Tending to the more-than-human

A workshop series and exhibition at the Anglican Chapel of Nunhead Cemetery

The fungal, microbial and multispecies networks that sustain human life are often invisible to us. Yet beneath the surfaces of even the most urban environments, a slow labour is underway. Fungi break down residues, bacteria transform decaying matter and roots quietly move through renewing soil.

In the face of individualism and capitalist extraction, SOFT GROUND draws our attention to these forms of invisible labour and the intricate networks of interdependence that surround us, connecting us with the more-than-human environments we inhabit. The artworks in the exhibition ask what might change if we understood these relationships as a form of kinship, one that unsettles frameworks of productivity and exploitation.
What responsibilities might follow? What forms of care do these relationships demand?

The exhibition brings together Chia-Ning Yeh and Sol Bulteel, two international artists based in South London, alongside practices that engage with ecology, multispecies relationships and collective care. Across workshops, performances and an exhibition, they explore microbial and multispecies intimacy, food rituals, decomposition, failure and collective forms of care.

Set within the historical Anglican Chapel at Nunhead Cemetery, SOFT GROUND invites us to notice the relationships that are taking place under our feet, and to consider how we might participate in them differently.

We would like to thank the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery for their support in making this exhibiton happen.

Image: Chia-Ning Yeh

Image: Chia-Ning Yeh

Image: Chia-Ning Yeh

hidden in plain sight, Chia-Ning Yeh (2026)

What invisible companionships are expressed through food rituals?

Working across fermentation, sculpture, and performance, Ning’s practice explores interspecies relationality, tracing connections to family, memory, and more-than-human companionships. Ning’s new series of works, hidden in plain sight (2026), expands kinship to include invisible companions: the bacteria in a jar of pickles, the microbes in our microbiome, and the microorganisms that transform matter around us.

Living sculptures, fed throughout the exhibition, continue to transform throughout the show, incorporating elements of pickling and composting sessions that take place on site.

Drawing on Donna Haraway's framework of multispecies entanglements, hidden in plain sight (2026) rejects individualism in favour of messy interspecies alliances. Fermentation and decay are framed as active participants in care, responsibility, and shared space.
Following the exhibition, the compost from the sculptures will be returned to a local vegetable garden.

Image: Sol Bulteel

Image: Sol Bulteel

Image: Sol Bulteel

Failure Archive, Sol Bulteel (2026)

What might multispecies collaboration ask of us?
Sol’s practice explores what it means to share agency with more-than-human collaborators and what happens when they don’t meet our expectations.

Failure Archive (2026) is a living textile sculpture and performance that turns to fungi as collaborators and teachers, unsettling familiar ideas of productivity, efficiency and control.

Where human systems prioritise speed and certainty, Failure Archive (2026) sits instead with failure and unpredictability, asking what we might gain when something we wanted doesn't happen.

Image: Chia-Ning Yeh

Image: Chia-Ning Yeh

Image: Chia-Ning Yeh

Events Programme
Exhibition Launch and Private View 26 September, 4:00–6:30pm
Join us for the exhibition opening, with two live performances by Chia-Ning Yeh and Sol Bulteel.Free drinks provided by Holos Kombucha.

Failure Archive by Sol | 4:30 – 5:15pm
A participatory performance and workshop exploring failure as a space for reflection, release and unexpected possibility. Using mushrooms as a guide, the session considers transformation, interconnectedness and collaboration with more-than-human entities.

Symbiont by Ning | 5:30 – 6:00pm.
A performance reflecting on the slow cycles of decay, transformation and return involved in composting. Extending the process of pickling beyond the kitchen, Symbiont creates a sculpture as a more-than-human partner in a shared process of transformation.

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/soft-ground-tickets-1998901513235

Pick Pickled Pickle 27 September, 11:00am–2:00pm
A hands-on pickling and composting workshop with Chia-Ning Yeh. Participants will learn fermentation techniques, make apple salad and quick pickles, and help feed the living sculpture at the centre of the exhibition. The workshop ends with a shared meal.

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pick-pickled-pickle-tickets-2000891537451

About the Artists:

Chia-Ning Yeh (@j_ning_1126) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Taipei and London, currently studying an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her practice centers on non-binary storytelling, speculative imaginaries, intimacy, and posthumanism. Most works are with sculpture, moving image, and participatory workshops to explore neglected or unlikely connections in daily life, and how relational structures are formed and sustained, often engaging with materials that change over time and collaborative processes that unfold collectively. Through material experimentation and workshop-based methods, she reflects on the shifting boundaries between human and non-human relations.

Sol Bulteel (@fromtheground.up__) is a Canadian, London-based artist working across sculpture, installation, performance, and living materials through a research-led practice. A Fine Art graduate of Central Saint Martins and a current MA Art and Ecology student at Goldsmiths, Sol has performed at the Tate and received the 2025 Barry Martin Award in recognition of their experimental and interdisciplinary approach. www.solanabulteel.com

Curated by Judit Agui (@juditagui), a curator, producer and editor working across art, ecology and education. Her practice focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration and site-specific, participatory projects. Recent work includes the 2025 Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival for Orleans House Gallery, the Vital Signs Library for Science Gallery London, and Stand of the Sun for Artangel and g39. She is a founding member of the Urban Heat Collective.
www.juditagui.com