Too many resources are being wasted and ending up in the bin – food included. But there's potential in what gets thrown away: for transformation, for memory, for new beginnings.

Camilla Alberti's installation Feeding the Ghost emerges from an engagement with the transformative power of matter and asks about its role in redefining our relationship with the other and with the world. Her artistic practice draws on ancient ritual traditions in which that which has decayed is not considered worthless, but rather as a carrier of knowledge – an approach that is gaining new urgency today.

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

For Feeding the Ghost, she works with organic waste such as peels, roots, coffee grounds and seeds. Cooked, burnt and pulverised, these are transformed into pigments, pastes and natural binders. Together with leaves, blossoms and fruits, they give rise to fragile forms between nature, body and memory.

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

From what has been discarded, Camilla Alberti creates ghostly, hybrid sculptures – beings between times. The exhibition Feeding the Ghost takes place on the occasion of the award ceremony as part of the City of Graz Environmental Prize, which the Kunsthaus Graz is presenting in 2025 for the first time in cooperation with the City of Graz and the Markt der Zukunft.