Composting is a practice of soil renewal. As artistic practice, composting works and thinks through forms of belonging. It takes place in form of eco-social collaborations, investigating the relationship to land and multispecies encounter.
Composting as artistic practice
Gerardo Gomez Tonda
![](https://www.hku.nl/getmedia/758c290f-908c-4f2d-a6bf-f77500e19a57/GomezTonda.jpg?type=MediaZoom1)
The Work
Origin Stories explores articulations, relations and narratives of belonging, and takes the conditions of exile and displacement—forced or voluntary—as a point of departure. Himself a migrant in the Netherlands, and coming from a family of exiles who fled the Spanish civil war and built a new life in Mexico, Gerardo Gomez Tonda brings together personal stories and research. This, together with the concrete challenge of finding belonging in a particular, physical space, opens up a performative stage for participation and collaboration. A flooded town, his family archive, a fish invasion, waste. These are some of the motives that invite the audience to participate in the work. These are some of the questions that guide his work: ‘Is it possible to rearticulate be/longings?’, ‘How to let go of the lingering smell of remote soils, and root ourselves in the here and now instead?, ‘How to treat toxic sites of belonging?’, ‘Can we imagine/build an inclusive form of belonging?’
![](https://www.hku.nl/getmedia/4d08e07a-085d-4f7e-be03-1fe9eaf89f8b/GomezTonda2.jpg?type=MediaZoom1)
![](https://www.hku.nl/getmedia/9bc2bd9b-bf68-4d4d-aede-0c9d6083e1f1/gomez-3.jpg?type=MediaZoom1)
![](https://www.hku.nl/getmedia/5b2e32b0-8a48-4ee6-aa91-fb4277a2d761/gomez4.jpg?type=MediaZoom1)
![](https://www.hku.nl/getmedia/0577e77c-bb49-44d0-a20b-d366cde2ce29/gomez5.jpg?type=MediaZoom1)
![](https://www.hku.nl/getmedia/d31d440e-67cf-479e-a45f-da00023461fe/gomez6.jpg?type=MediaZoom1)
Photo-credits: Chun Yao Lin and Alëna Vinokurova
The maker
Gerardo Gomez Tonda
![](https://www.hku.nl/getmedia/361df08b-80c3-41e6-8617-86e2d78ed73b/GomezTondaphoto.jpg?type=MediaZoom1)