REFLECTIONS on SENTIENCE
Cohort Testimonials
Encountering the Forest Oracle
By Evgenia Emets
It was a joy and a privilege to be part of a group so deeply aligned and dedicated to exploring forest intelligence — the sentience and being of the forest — from literary, artistic, poetic, and somatic perspectives. The Gifts from the Sentient Forest project offered a rare space where these dimensions could coexist and converse. To work alongside a multidisciplinary team that combined research, immersive experience, and collective creation was profoundly enriching. Our time together, both in the field and in preparing the exhibition, allowed for a dynamic balance between open exploration and focused artistic production.
This mode of working, weaving together extended periods of immersion in the forest with the collaborative creation of a final exhibition, feels deeply fertile. It allows for a slow, embodied exchange between the human participants and the more-than-human world, while the structure of creating a shared presentation supports a sense of coherence, purpose, and mutual support within the group. Through this process, we cultivated not only artistic outcomes but also relational depth — among ourselves and with the forest beings we listened to.
Throughout my participation, I focused on deepening my experience of forest sentience: on perceiving the forest as a living composition, a masterpiece of interwoven elements and agents. This inquiry resonates with my ongoing work as an artist and as the founder of Eternal Forest, a long-term initiative devoted to creating forest sanctuaries as living artworks. The project provided a field of resonance where both practices could inform each other.
During my two visits to Finland, I took part in two retreats and contributed to the exhibition. On the first retreat in Äkäslompolo, and my visit to Varkaankuru old forest, I found myself mesmerised by the ancient roots of uprooted trees — intricate, weathered forms shaped by wind, snow, water, and sun. Their sculptural presence spoke to me of cycles of life and decay, and I began developing a film work titled 'The Forest Oracle'. This work explores the patterns our consciousness perceives in the natural world — how the mind finds meaning and messages in organic forms. My lifelong fascination with pattern recognition evolved here into a dialogue with the forest itself, where seeing became a form of communion, an encounter with the spiritual life force that animates all living matter. https://eternalforest.earth/index.php/art/forests-oracle/
On the second trip, to Isokuru Kota near Pyhä, as we stayed in the sacred lands of the Sámi people, I had an experience that opened another dimension of listening. There, among the rocks, I sensed a different kind of sentience: geological time, the deep pulse of the earth that underlies the forest’s vitality. It was a humbling meeting with the ancient presence of stone, a reminder that the forest is inseparable from the mountain, the rocks, the soil, and the unseen memory of the land.
I believe that projects like Gifts from the Sentient Forest hold immense potential. They model a way of working that is at once artistic, scientific, and spiritual — an ecology of practice that I am also prototyping within Eternal Forest, where art, research, and regeneration unfold together in living dialogue with the land.
All images on this page are copyright of the artist Evgenia Emets.
Top: 'Forest Oracle' (2025). (film still. 8 mins.)
Bottom: 'Forest Oracle' (2025). (film still. 8 mins.)
