WRO 21st Media Art Biennale
The WRO Media Art Biennale is a international festival dedicated to contemporary art at the intersection of media, technology, and sensory experience. Held biennially in Wrocław since 1989, it brings together artists and audiences from around the world to explore experimental forms of artistic expression. The 21st edition, themed “Qualia”, focused on the subjective, pre-conceptual nature of perception—inviting visitors to engage with artworks through their own raw, sensory responses before interpretation takes over.
Through exhibitions, performances, and workshops staged across multiple venues in the city, the Biennale created a platform for encounters that are as personal as they are collective. This year the Museum of Edible Earth was one of the exhibitions.
The Museum of Edible Earth is both a collection and a ritual space. It features over 400 samples of edible soils, clays, and mineral substances gathered from across the globe, where the tradition of geophagy—eating earth—is practiced for health, spiritual, or cultural reasons. The installation challenges Western preconceptions about what constitutes food, wellness, and taste. Visitors are encouraged to sample select materials, turning the act of tasting into a learning and intriguing experience.
This engagement with earth as nourishment resonated with wider conversations within the Biennale around the materiality of perception and the role of sensory experience in understanding the world. Compost as Superfood, another project of Dr. masharu, added another layer to the discussion, connecting digestion and decay in cycles of transformation and sustainability. The Museum stands as a living archive, where earth becomes edible memory and multisensory data.
To deepen this experience, Dr. masharu hosted a workshop titled “Eating Earth” during the Biennale. This event allowed participants to directly engage with a bigger variety of earth samples while also learning about them and a little of Dr. masharu’s path and their engagement with edible soil.Through tasting, discussion, and shared storytelling, the workshop offered the viewers to reflect on identity, belonging, and our relationship with the land.
Together, the Museum of Edible Earth, the “Eating Earth” workshop and the project Compost as Superfood offered a rich and intimate lens into how art can activate the senses, blur disciplinary boundaries, and open up new forms of understanding the human connection with earth.
More info: WRO Media Art Biennale
