Environmental Art Award: Camilla Alberti

Too many resources are wasted and end up in the trash – including food. But there is potential in what is thrown away: for transformation, for remembrance, for a new beginning.

Camilla Alberti's installation Feeding the Ghost emerges from a exploration of the transformative power of matter and questions its role in redefining our relationship to the Other and to the world. Her artistic practice refers to ancient ritual traditions in which discarded matter is not considered worthless, but rather a carrier of knowledge – an approach that is gaining new urgency today.

Alberti weaves sculptural, textile and ritual practices into a contemporary visual language. Her work is based on a collection of contemporary ruins: abandoned objects, both organic and inorganic materials, industrial waste. These find new form in her sculptures and textiles.

For Feeding the Ghost, she processes organic waste such as peels, roots, coffee grounds and seeds. Boiled, burned and pulverised, these are transformed into pigments, pastes and natural binders. Together with leaves, flowers and fruits, they create fragile forms between nature, body and memory.

At the centre is the idea of matter as a living archive: a body in constant mutation and a symbol of regenerative possibility. The artistic process follows an ecological sensitivity – mindful, exploratory, connected to the cycles of nature.

Camilla Alberti creates ghostly, hybrid sculptures from discarded materials – beings between times. The exhibition Feeding the Ghost is being held to mark the presentation of the Kunsthaus Graz Environmental Art Award, which is being given out for the first time in collaboration with the City of Graz and the Market of the Future 2025 initiative.