Petroflora
2025-2026
A laptop. A sink. A cotton shirt. A coffee cup. A pencil. A bicycle. A sandwich. A glass of water.
Each of these, however mundane, finds its beginning in the ground. Even water—elusive, flowing—is filtered, carried, or touched by the soil before reaching us.
The earth is not a distant backdrop to our lives, but a quiet architect of the everyday. Its molecules and microorganisms are embedded in the objects we use, the systems we rely on—from supermarkets and medicine to industry and even space travel. The soil is both origin and condition.
And so it is with the body. My microbiome, the intimate terrain within, reflects the land from which my food has grown. Vegetables rise directly from the ground; animal products, indirectly rooted through what animals consume. The state of the soil—its richness or depletion—shapes my inner ecology.
When the earth is industrially altered—through pesticides, fertilizers, monoculture—its transformation echoes in me. My body is no longer separate.
The boundary between soil, self, and object dissolves.
What lies beneath lives on within everything.
