—Monica M. White

Perfect Knowledge of the Ground is project curated by DC-based, transdisciplinary artist Raina Martens. Comprising of a virtual bookshelf, 25 limited limited-edition mail-order care packages, and a film screening, it responds to the capitalist and colonialist roots of our current ecological crisis by highlighting alternative agricultural practices.

Raina Martens writes: “This project is modeled on the sharing of critical knowledge and care… Instead of reproducing disastrous extractive logics, it turns to Black and Indigenous ways of knowing the ground to offer more reciprocal and collectively life-sustaining models for the future.”

The Virtual Bookshelf is open to the public and accessible here.

Through writing, installation, and ceramic work, Raina Martens dramatizes entanglements between social and material worlds. They are a founding member of ​the Urban Soils Institute’s Art Extension Service, and helped design ​Project: Soils​, a collaborative initiative between artists and soil scientists.