kinship at the Nunhead Cemetery.
About this Event
As the Autumn equinox falls upon the cemetery we gather to celebrate our invisible companions. Guided by the smell of wet soil, alive with fermenting leaves, microorganisms and fungi after a dry summer, we turn to each other to prepare for a colder season.
How are we connected to the living systems around us? What happens when we care for them, and turn to collaborating with them?
SOFT GROUND presents an afternoon of fermentation, failure and performance at the Nunhead Cemetery Chapel.
The exhibition and events will showcase new and recent works by Chia-Ning Yeh and Sol Bulteel. Sol will lead the audience on a guided meditation inviting us to reflect on failure and letting go. Ning will present a live performance tracing the invisible labour of decay through composting and fermentation.
Chia-Ning Yeh (@j_ning_1126) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Taipei and London, currently studying an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her practice centers on non-binary storytelling, speculative imaginaries, intimacy, and posthumanism. Most works are with sculpture, moving image, and participatory workshops to explore neglected or unlikely connections in daily life, and how relational structures are formed and sustained, often engaging with materials that change over time and collaborative processes that unfold collectively. Through material experimentation and workshop-based methods, she reflects on the shifting boundaries between human and non-human relations.
Sol (@fromtheground.up__) is a Canadian, London-based artist working across sculpture, installation, performance, and living materials through a research-led practice. A Fine Art graduate of Central Saint Martins and a current MA Art and Ecology student at Goldsmiths, Sol has performed at the Tate and received the 2025 Barry Martin Award in recognition of their experimental and interdisciplinary approach.
www.solanabulteel.com
We warmly invite you to join us to celebrate fermentation and decay as invitations to strengthen our ecological relations.
Free drinks provided by fermentation partner Holos Kombucha.
Location: Anglican Chapel, Nunhead Cemetery, Linden Grove, London, SE15 3LP https://maps.app.goo.gl/wVm6ahFW1QNQKpUL6?g_st=ic
What3Words ///tiny.swept.emerge https://w3w.co/tiny.swept.emerge
Programme
SOFT GROUND exhibition | open from 4:00 – 6:30pm
SOFT GROUND is a workshop series and exhibition about companionship, ecology and kinship at Nunhead Cemetery bringing together local artists and residents to explore multi-species collaboration and ecological relationships through textiles, composting and fermentation practices.
Held in the Nunhead Cemetery’s historic chapel, SOFT GROUND invites visitors to rethink how we relate with the human and more-than-human worlds. From microbiomes to fungi, the projects in SOFT GROUND argue that these sometimes-unseen organisms are our kin and intergenerational participants in life with humans.
Failure Archive by Sol | 4:30 – 5:15pm
Failure Archive is a meditation and participatory workshop exploring failure as a space for reflection, agency, release, and unexpected possibility, with mushrooms as a guide for thinking about transformation and interconnectedness. Drawing on experiences of collaboration with more-than-human entities, the workshop asks what we might gain, discover, or create precisely because something we wanted didn’t happen.
Symbiont by Ning | 5:30 – 6:00pm
Symbiont reflects on the slow cycles of decay, transformation and return required for composting. The performance extends the pickle-making process beyond the human body and the kitchen, shifting it into a slower cycle of decomposition, transformation, and return. A sculpture becomes the vessel for this transformation, holding not only the product of previous fermentation processes but also the ongoing interaction between organic matter, soil, time, and human intervention, creating a more-than-human partner that humans bond with for mutual survival.
Ends at 6:30pm.
Accessibility
Nunhead Cemetery is a historic outdoor site with mixed terrain. Paths vary from smooth, wide avenues to uneven or sloped ground, and conditions can change with the weather. Some areas may be easier to navigate with motorised mobility aids than with manual wheelchairs. A temporary threshold ramp will be installed at the entrance to the Anglican Chapel ruin to support step‑free access. Assistance dogs are welcome onsite.
Event venue & nearby stays
Nunhead Cemetery Chapel, Linden Grove, London, United Kingdom
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.