Io Makandal (b. 1987, Johannesburg, South Africa)

is an interdisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Working with drawing, photography, organic matter and installation, her practice is concerned with feminist and environmental embodiments of process, entropy, urban ecology, and hybrid environments during a time of environmental shift. Her 2024 public sculpture Ophidian’s Promise was realised through the project A Feral Commons, a global co-commission in public art spearheaded by the Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN), and led by Dubai-based Alserkal Advisory. She has exhibited both locally and internationally and her work is a part of several private, public and institutional collections.

"If The Earth Had Eyes" incorporates soil chromatography as an entry point into understanding Soil/Earth as a being — the original mother. By quite literally likening it to an iris, we give Soil/Earth an identity, a blueprint — an individual iris. The piece invites the viewer to see themselves in the Earth's eye by way of a reflective mirror as the pupil, thereby conjuring the idea that we are of the Earth. We are the same material substance, reconfigured in a different form.

The piece I have made is a composite iris of several soil chroma taken from the Upper Jukskei River Catchment area (see attached screenshot). Although small, the Jukskei holds significance in the story of Johannesburg, with its springs and eyes beginning in the centre of the city (now Ellis Park Stadium). Its soils and waters are carried out of the city and into the Crocodile River; along the way, it witnesses the city from its banks and absorbs whatever is put into it, holding an archive of material, memory, and spiritual significance. The Jukskei is an invisible life-force — arguably the body of this region on which the city is built.