Anicka Yi's Living Ecosystem Installation Debuts at Storm King

Storm King Art Center unveiled Anicka Yi's "Message from the Mud" at a private reception featuring a meditation session and remarks by Executive Director Nora Lawrence. The installation, a semicircular earthwork near the south ponds, contains Winogradsky columns filled with biological matter from Storm King's soil and water, cultivated over two years. The columns, glowing green with algae, sit in a gravel-lined pool surrounded by stone blocks shaped like ancient pediments and Precambrian fossil-inspired molds. Lawrence described the work as bringing "unseen worlds underground up to our eye level," emphasizing non-human time scales. Yi manipulated the columns' colors using compost like paper towels and egg shells. The event also included the "Before Skeletons, Before Teeth" culinary project with broths, crudité, and chocolate rocks. Two other installations debuted: Liz Glynn's "Open House," a cement cast of a Gilded Age ballroom from the demolished Whitney family mansion, and Saif Azzuz's "weych-pues / tàkhòne (where the rivers meet)," a 25-foot metal sturgeon. "Anicka Yi: Message from the Mud" is on view through November 9, 2026.