From Shears to Sweaters, an Experimental New Exhibition Examines the Long, Wooly Relationship Between Humans and Sheep
The Amsterdam show features an eclectic mix of wool garments, life-size sheep replicas and philosophical musings about the interconnectedness of the two species
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After six years on the run from his New Zealand farm, Shrek the Sheep was found hiding in a cave and brought back to civilization in 2004. The merino sheep had grown a 61-pound cloud of wool around his slender ovine frame—enough to make 20 large men’s suits. Within minutes, a world champion shearer cut away Shrek’s burden, and the sheep was back to living the quiet life of a domesticated farm animal.
Shrek is a dramatic example of a simple fact: Unlike their wild ancestors, most domesticated sheep need humans because they don’t naturally molt their old wool. Without human intervention, Shrek the Sheep would have “suffocated under the stress of his ever-growing coat,” Andrea Trimarchi, a co-founder of the Milan- and Rotterdam-based design studio Formafantasma, told Wallpaper’s Giovanna Dunmall in 2023.
Formafantasma’s latest project is “Oltre Terra,” an exhibition now on view at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam that examines wool as the embodiment of a long, complex relationship between humans and sheep.
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Since humans domesticated sheep some 10,000 years ago, the two species have collaborated to produce a whole lot of wool. The International Wool Textile Organization estimates that in 2021 alone, some 1.2 billion sheep created 4,296 million pounds of raw wool. But not all of that wool made it to our sweaters and socks. Each year, 317,000 tons—or 634 million pounds—of wool is discarded or burned worldwide in favor of higher quality or synthetic materials, according to Nina Siegal of the New York Times.
“We as humans have designed this relationship with sheep,” Amanda Pinaith, a curator at the Stedelijk, tells the Times. “Over hundreds and hundreds of years, tame sheep have developed through human design so that it would become a wool-producing machine with ears and eyes, instead of an animal.”
Shrek, an apt symbol of this overbearing yet inescapable human-sheep relationship, is the subject of a life-size replica in the “Oltre Terra” exhibition, which originally debuted at the National Museum in Oslo in 2023. Wool is a popular garment-making material in Norway, a country that produces around 3.5 tons of the textile fiber annually.
The exhibition’s Italian name, “Oltre Terra” (“across ground” in English), is derived from the word “transhumance,” the practice of moving livestock from pasture to pasture between the seasons. It also reflects the show’s “transdisciplinary approach,” according to the Stedelijk’s website.
Formafantasma began the “Oltre Terra” project by conducting interviews with shepherds, biologists, philosophers and activists, as well as other individuals whose lives intersect with the ovine world.
“For us, it’s about unifying narratives and showing how these are complex ecologies that should be displayed together,” Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, the other half of Formafantasma, told Dezeen’s Jane Englefield in 2023.
“The scope of the exhibition is to explore this very intimate yet intricate relationship between humans and animals, in which the boundaries between tamer and domesticated fade,” the designers added.
The exhibition itself is an eclectic mix of media, forming something of a fragmented diorama—an intentional disruption of the typical natural history museum layout. Besides Shrek, six other replicas of different sheep breeds stand on top of display cabinets and graze on the glass. Inside the cases, large collections of shears and razors are joined by bells and shepherds’ crooks. Textiles and carpets made from both refined and excess wool are draped throughout. In the center of it all, a video called Tactile Afferents explores touch as an “expression of interspecies tenderness and love, and as a form of violence,” according to the exhibition materials.
“No one element is more important than another,” Trimarchi explained to Wallpaper. “And unlike a diorama, there’s no glass separating you from the work. You can walk within it and be a part of it.”
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The exhibition’s wall text—with titles like “We can only save our loved ones” and “It is impossible to know who seduced whom”—are the work of philosopher Emanuele Coccia and contribute to the musing, multilayered examination of the human-sheep relationship.
But Formafantasma doesn’t stay in the realm of musing. To promote sustainable design, the studio is working with furniture and textile companies to use surplus wool instead of industrial materials in its products.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of London’s Serpentine art gallery, which hosted Formafantasma’s 2020 exhibition on wood, lauds this combination of research, design and production.
It’s a rarity in an art world that often separates the three, and it’s a fitting reflection of the designers’ insistence on a “transdisciplinary” approach to wool and human-sheep history. As Obrist tells the Times, “I think that’s a big achievement.”
“Oltre Terra” is on view at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam through July 13, 2025.
