repair is a practice
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed right now. Climate change is accelerating, plastic keeps accumulating in once pristine places, and meaningful policy lags behind what’s needed. Or removed entirely. And then there’s everything else, right?
I feel it. I’m sure you do too.
Sometimes all I can do is ride out those anxiety spikes and schedule a screen-free weekend of rest.
I’ve found, though, that the ideas of repair, healing, and remediation can be grounding. They anchor me to something that feels calm, but still has movement. Progress that is steady rather than loud.
Because of that, it has been helpful to look to artists who incorporate repair and remediation into their work.
These are artists who are actively participating in repair. Their work doesn’t offer quick solutions but recognizes sustained, long-term effort, the need for multidisciplinary collaboration, and stewardship that extends beyond a single generation.
Agnes Denes — Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule
Agnes Denes is the inspiration for this post.
I learned about her work in school, and it gave me such an ache in my heart to learn about her projects. Her whole body of work is worth exploring, but the piece I’m highlighting today is Tree Mountain.
With Tree Mountain, Denes transformed a former mining site and gravel pit in Finland into a living forest. Eleven thousand trees were planted, helping restore an ecosystem on land heavily damaged by extraction.
But the project extends beyond restoration. Each tree was “adopted” by an individual or family, with stewardship passed down through generations.
The work embeds responsibility into its structure. Repair here is both ecological and cultural, asking us to consider what it means to care for something we may never see fully mature.
Betsy Damon — Living Water Garden
The Living Water Garden is a public park in Chengdu, China that also functions as a water purification system.
Designed in the 1990s, the project mimics nature’s filtration systems through sedimentation, filtration by plants, and the movement of water through sculptural basins to clean polluted river water.
My favorite part is how interactive the whole process is.
Betsy Damon created a functioning ecological system at a scale you can walk through, touch, experience, and learn from. It feels not only like an act of repair, but also the creation of a community space.
It is deeply rooted in collaboration, involving scientists, engineers, and the local community.
Here is Betsy Damon Introducing her work Living Water Garden.
Mel Chin — Revival Field
In Revival Field, Mel Chin worked with scientists to address toxic soil through phytoremediation (the use of plants to absorb heavy metals from the soil).
Planted on a hazardous waste site, the project used specific plants known as hyperaccumulators to draw contaminants like cadmium and zinc from the ground. Over time, these toxins concentrate in the plants, which can then be harvested and safely processed.
I’m unsure whether this project made a measurable difference in practical terms, but I can see a through-line from this work into many of Chin’s later projects. He often takes on complex systemic problems that are difficult to fully understand because of how many forces shape them.
He continually asks how he, in his role as an artist, can engage with and impact the issues he is addressing.
Here is Mel Chin talking about his work on Art21
Conclusion
These works are not quick fixes. They are slow, collaborative, and rooted in long timelines.
Repair is not a single act. It’s a practice. It requires attention, time, and a willingness to work within systems larger than any one person. It also means accepting the reality of the moment and our own limitations.
Do you know artists whose work involves repair—of land, community, history, or culture? I’d love to hear about them.