Good Gut!
Between May and August 2024, artist Margherita Soldati joined us from Amsterdam for a new residency in partnership with Mondriaan Fonds. Whilst here she created a project called Good Gut! with collaborators from Huntly and the Netherlands.
Margherita’s artistic practice sits at the crossovers between art and wellbeing. She works collaboratively with scientists, healthcare workers and ecologists to make installations, sculptures and performances, drawing on research and academic knowledge to create connections; between materials and our senses, our bodies and the environment. Her work is bodily, textural, sensory and invites us to experience our bodies and their surroundings in new ways. The starting point for Margherita’s residency was her desire to explore soil, its microbes and networks. She wanted to consider connections between where and how food is grown, and how it is connected to our guts. With some of the same microbes found in our guts as in the soil, Margherita asked if healthy soil can affect the health of our microbiome - does caring for one affect the health of the other?
Good Gut! unfolded over three months through collaboration with evolutionary ecologist Justin Stewart (NL), haptonomic practitioner Rosalie Bak (NL), Willie Towers (UK) and local regenerative growers, known as ‘soil carers’: Rosie Leagas, Judith McPhun, Katrina Flad, Lindy Young, Jen Osbaldiston, Kelly Ireland, Georgia Brooker, Clara Attimomelli, Meriem Kayouche-Reeve. Margherita created ‘soil clocks’, soil spas, textiles, conversations and investigations into the connections between soil and our guts. During the residency period she secured further funding to take her work in Huntly into the lab, informing future artworks she has produced since.
About the artist
Margherita Soldati is a visual artist based in Amsterdam and co-founder of Absurd Beings Collective. She joined us on residency in partnership with Mondriaan Fonds.
With a profound sense of care and curiosity for the intersection of art and well-being, Margherita's work centers on the transformative potential of materials and their connection to the human senses. Her multidisciplinary practice encompasses installation, sculpture, and performance, utilising natural elements and organic textures. She often engages with society’s institutions of science, healthcare and science of the mind, to engender accessible relationships with the work of experts. Margherita invites viewers to intimately engage with their surroundings, fostering a deeper understanding of our intricate relationship with the environment and the profound impact of sensory experiences.