HOMO MARE

Our home takes care of us, so we take care of our home.
(translated from Mare Scriptum by Alexandra Sönderström)



Homo Mare (2025) works within the framework of speculative art, constructing an alternative reality through a narrative that dissolves the boundaries between fact and fiction, deep time and the present.

Rooted in the concept of re-enchantment, Ida Scheel explores how this shift — from wonder to rationality — can be intertwined with sustainability, opening up a new conversation about humanity’s relationship to the Earth.

Through a fragment from a fictional laboratory at the University of Svalbard, where the narrative originates, Ida Scheel speaks through her chosen voice: the researcher. From this vantage point, she tells of a human-like species that roamed beneath the ocean’s surface some 30,000 years ago — a species with a radical approach to sustainability, living in harmony with their environment in a delicate zero-sum balance.

The work unfolds through ceramic objects, both familiar and unfamiliar, that occupy the space between recognition and strangeness. One part of the installation evokes the work of the researchers — at a stat where concerns like indoor smoking bans and hygiene have long ceased to matter. The other is composed of archaeological remnants that, through artifacts and a long-extinct language, Mare Scriptum, recount the story of the Homo Mare people — and offers a vision of another way of living on Earth.