A Shape Without A Word
2026 On view
Artist M12 Studio
DetailsSalvaged 19th-century log cabin, basaltic sand, mulberry trees, building materials
Curator NON STNDRD James McAnally
Address
2300 Falling Springs Rd
Sauget, IL
Site Description
Accessibility: This campus is outdoors at a postindustrial steel foundry and not fully ADA accessible. For your safety, closed-toe shoes are required. Visitors may explore the campus. Please remain mindful of your surroundings, stay on designated visitor routes and refrain from climbing on artifacts. Visitors under 18 years of age require supervision. Report any unsafe conditions to staff immediately. Portable ADA restrooms are available. Rideshare apps may not pick up from this location. Open Fri–Sat, 10 am – 5 pm by appointment only on other days. To book an appointment, email staff@nationalbuildingartscenter.org.
Artwork Details
About the Artwork
A Shape Without A Word emerges directly from the postindustrial landscape of the National Building Arts Center and its setting within the former company town of Monsanto—present-day Sauget, IL. This place has long been a center of both regional industrial production and global ecological devastation. The artwork explores architecture as a site of relational exchange and spontaneous change, even in conditions that at first seem resistant to renewal.
The installation brings timber salvaged from an early settler cabin into conversation with a ruderal garden thriving in a sealed sand bunker. Mulberry trees extend from the bunker into the installation space, their shifting shadows suggesting a generative, nondualist relationship to time, growth, and ecological succession. This ongoing dialogue between the built and living environment creates a space for reflection on the interconnected and evolving relationships between industrial decline, environmental degradation, and ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.