This piece comes from a place on the alvar where the soil is shaped directly by the movements of cattle. On these paths, the reddish-brown earth is finely ground by the weight of their bodies and the pressure of their hooves.
I collected some of this soil from one of the heifer trails and processed it into pigment.
I often think of these animal paths as a kind of parallel infrastructure—lines drawn slowly across the land by generations of movement. Over centuries, their repeated routes carve traces that intersect, divide, and reconnect, forming something like a rhizome of pathways.
On Öland, humans have kept livestock since the Stone Age, so these trails are not just ecological features; they’re part of the island’s cultural history. They hold the memory of coexistence between humans, animals, and landscape.
For this work, I painted with the processed earth using soy milk as a binder, on cotton bed linen—a fabric already tied to everyday use and bodily presence.
Soil from the heifers’ paths, soy milk on bed linen fabric, 163×98 cm.
Helena Wikestam 