New year, new life.

Outside, winter holds the landscape in stillness. Snow and ice cover the ground, lakes freeze, growth pauses. Yet beneath the cold surface, life is not gone—it waits.

Ster Borgman’s work reflects this same suspended state. Through acts of material transformation, Borgman explores how nature endures extremes. Like an alchemist, pigments are made from plants, stones, and oxidized metals gathered through walking and attention, inviting wonder for non-human resilience.

Detail of 'A Fired Forest' presented at ROOTS Exhibiton during Dutch Design Week (Piet Hein Eek)

In the glass oven, plants from the Veluwe are exposed to fire. Their bodies burn away, leaving delicate imprints sealed in glass—burnt stems, fragile outlines, traces of what once was. As in winter, life appears absent, yet its potential remains.

Fire and frost mirror one another. Both halt growth, both transform, both prepare the ground. The Veluwe, shaped by increasing drought and fire, continues to regenerate—just as forests do after winter, sending new leaves from blackened stems.

Borgman’s works exist in this in-between moment: between fire and regrowth, between ice and thaw. They remind us that stillness is not an end, but a pause—holding the promise of return.

A Fired Forest by Ster Borgman was presented at ROOTS Exhibiton during Dutch Design Week

A part of ROOTS Exhibition 'Plant Based' at Dutch Design Week 2025 (presented at Piet Hein Eek)