Walter De Maria: New York Earth Room
The Earth Room is 130 tonnes of moist earth spread over 3,600 square feet.
You feel the humidity before you see the earth. You smell it when you’re close. You stand in a short hallway to the room, with a short transparent wall at one end separating you from the earth. The humid air condenses on the windows at one end of the room, and one wall warps into a shallow wave. The earth is roughly even height, piling up against some walls. It continues behind a wall, so you can’t see its full surface.
The earth is watered and raked on Mondays by the same person since the 1980s. The attendant at the desk couldn’t have been older than late 30s or early 40s, but he’s been coming in every Sunday for a decade.
It feels like the earth has always been there. You feel its presence even as other visitors enter and chatter. It’s loose as if never tread upon. Nothing grows or lives in it, but it requires care to survive. It affects its environment. It’s about 40 years old. And it occupies expensive real estate. The work takes a material, earth, that one typically thinks nothing of and makes it alive, significant, non-generic, valuable.
In the moment, I felt serene — with a hint, in the back of my mind, that it’s wild that this exists.
Thanks to Piper Hart for asking me about this visit.
