People lived on Earth for thousands of years before we were born and, grand or humble, left marks that influence our lives today. We owe our nations, our technology, our beliefs, our customs – our very bodies – to their lives, their work, their joys and their suffering.

Artist Jessica Gath takes her inspiration from science’s law of conservation of mass and Daoist principles of life and death to create Even the highest mind... She gathers dirt from the graves of those to whom her work pays tribute, a practice that has taken her to many locations across the United States and Europe. The artwork uses this dirt in sculpture, installation, and performance to create a physical metaphor for the human experience of being one with the planet physically and transcending the body’s earthen home.

Even the highest mind... is an homage to all who came before us and left behind ideas that nourish and teach us; from these ideas our own take root and grow, for us and those who come later.