Stéphanie Kilgast builds her sculptures out of things most of us would walk past without noticing. A crushed can on the pavement. A scratched CD player. A VHS tape gathering dust at the back of a drawer. These objects, relics of everyday life, become the foundations for something much stranger in her hands: living habitats overrun with coral, fungi, lichens, and plants.
Her imagined world is one where people have disappeared but their objects remain, slowly reclaimed by nature. “In my artwork, humanity is absent, leaving behind its legacy of objects, buildings, and trash,” she says. It’s not a bleak vision. If anything, it feels exuberant. Mushrooms spread in bursts of color, lichens crawl into the cracks, animals and plants settle into new homes. “This symbiosis between the object and the growing environment reflects the balance and respect that humanity has lost,” Kilgast explains. “I try to recreate that through color, joy, and hope.”
There’s a lightness to these post-apocalyptic scenes. They’re playful, almost cheerful, even though the backdrop is collapse. A glass bottle sprouts coral, a cassette tape blooms with strange flowers, and an alarm clock—long obsolete thanks to smartphones—turns into the base of a miniature reef. They’re reminders that life doesn’t stop; it adapts.
This fall, Kilgast is releasing Utopia, a book that brings together the last ten years of her practice. It gathers sculptures, paintings, and sketchbook pages, alongside essays and a complete catalogue of her work. It’s part documentation, part celebration of how her ideas have evolved over a decade.
The book will only go to print if at least 150 pre-orders are placed by October 3, with shipping expected in December. Pre-orders are open now through Dashbook. For a closer look at her work, you can head to her website or follow her on Instagram.
