An overview of the Oltre Terra exhibition, with display cases, animal models and video screens. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
The exhibition Oltre Terra is philosophical in nature and invites visitors to reflect on the relationship between sheep and humans.
‘Natural history museums focus exclusively on nature, whilst museums of applied art emphasise human creativity, without shedding light on the interplay between the two’, states the opening text of Oltre Terra. This travelling exhibition has taken up residence in the basement of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and sets out to explore the relationship between humans and sheep.
In doing so, the exhibition does illuminate the interplay between animal and human, and in that sense ‘crossing boundaries’ – a loose translation of Oltre Terra – is also an apt title. Yet the objects on display are more reminiscent of a science museum than of art. The exhibition occupies a single large space, in which display cases and video screens have been arranged in the centre on a kind of scaffolding. Dotted among them are numerous life-size sheep made from polystyrene and resin, alongside old wool shears, a book of wool samples, a video charting the changing price of wool, a single painting, microscopic images of human hair and wool, models of various animal feet, and camera footage of wolves roaming about.
Disappointed
Those hoping for an artistic reflection will therefore come away somewhat disappointed; the exhibition is more philosophical in character. The captions are written by the philosopher Emanuele Coccia and certainly give pause for thought – though not in a vague or airy-fairy way. The exhibition primarily touches on things that most people probably never stop to consider in daily life: such as the possibility that wool afforded us to settle in colder places (illustrated by a woollen coat from 1593), or the question of whether sheep lost their ability to moult because they were shorn, or whether it was the other way round – that sheep stopped moulting and humans therefore began to use them. An amusing object in this context is the prototype shearing robot from 1983, which was never put into production due to technical problems.
Message
The exhibition makes considerably more sense when read alongside the texts in the accompanying booklet. Without it, the significance of many objects can still be guessed at, but the message is less compelling. Visitors would otherwise miss out on entertaining facts, such as that the Drenthe Heath sheep is descended from sheep that already lived in Europe during the Bronze Age, that wool fibres with a diameter of 16 microns are the most valuable, and that the ecological disruption caused by the introduction of sheep to Australia was partly due to the hard hooves of sheep – which damage the soft ground, something that native animals, lacking such hooves, do not do. The aforementioned models of animal feet illustrate this phenomenon.
Captions
A rather interesting exhibition, then, but one that owes much of its appeal to the captions. The most conceptually artistic element appears to be the video installation playing in the centre of the space. The video shows interactions – gentle or otherwise – between humans and sheep, whilst visitors are invited to sit on an itchy carpet of discarded wool. Those in search of more art of this kind can, of course, find it on the upper floors of the Stedelijk.
OLTRE TERRA
until 13 July 2025
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Museum admission: €22.50