#land-art

#land-art

Selected as part of SMACH 2025, the international open-air art biennale in the Italian Dolomites, the installation Trace of Land, designed by ELSE, imagine a large, round hay bale traversing the slopes of Armentara, climbing, descending, leaping, and leaving a trail of dry grass behind.

Trace of Land by ELSE Design reinterprets the hay bale as a spatial installation that unfolds across the pastures of Val Badia in the Italian Dolomites. Presented as part of SMACH 2025, the international open-air art biennale, the project transforms an agricultural object into a canopy-like structure that follows the terrain, offering places for shade, rest, and gathering. The installation takes the form of a continuous path of unfurled hay bales that move with the contours of the alpine landscape.

In 1982, conceptual artist Agnes Denes transformed a barren landfill near Wall Street into a two-acre wheat field for her project *Wheatfield - A Confrontation*. Commissioned by the Public Art Fund, the work involved months of labor, including soil preparation, hand-digging furrows, and planting seeds. Denes and her team maintained the field through irrigation, weeding, and fertilizing, ultimately harvesting over 1,000 pounds of wheat.