Exhibition:
The Earth is Thinking All Along...
Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, North Macedonia

English

The Earth as the Non-Objective World

Kazimir Malevich was a pioneering Russian avant-garde artist who founded the artistic and philosophical concept known as Suprematism. His idea of the “non-objective world” was central to this movement. According to Malevich, the non-objective world refers to a realm or reality that transcends the physical, objective world of material objects and naturalistic representation. He believed art should move away from depicting or imitating the external world and instead tap into pure form and color’s internal, spiritual essence.

Malevich saw geometric shapes, especially the square and the circle, as essential and universal forms that could express this non-objective, suprematist reality. His famous Black Square from 1915 is considered the first purely abstract painting, depicting a black square on a white ground, a radical departure from traditional representational art. Through works like these, Malevich aimed to create a new visual language that did not rely on recognizable objects or scenes from the objective world. His non-objective compositions using essential geometric elements were meant to evoke a higher, spiritual dimension beyond the material realm.

Malevich believed that art could access a universal, transcendent reality outside Earthly confines by abandoning objective representation and embracing pure abstraction. This non-objective world, expressed through shapes, colors, and their relationships, was seen as a more profound truth than the physical world perceived by the senses. In essence, Malevich’s concept of the non-objective world posited a new artistic reality free from material constraints, where art could explore the most profound metaphysical and spiritual ideas through abstraction’s pure visual language. He clarified:

Everything that we call nature, in the last analysis, is a figment of the imagination, having no relation whatever to reality. If the human being were suddenly to comprehend actual reality — in that very moment the battle would be decided and eternal, unshakeable perfection attained. . . . This is by no means the case, however, and so the hopeless struggle continues. What we are fighting for, as has been said, is nothing other than our consciousness and, in this connection, the fact that our nervous systems and our brains do not function always and absolutely under the control of our conscious minds but rather, are capable of acting and reacting outside of consciousness is left ont of account. The artistic (pictorial) conception, based upon feeling, of linear. Two-dimensional and spatial phenomena is not supported on an intellectual understanding of the utilitarian relationships of these phenomena; it is non-objective and subconscious and, viewed from an intellectual standpoint, constitutes, as it were, a “blind, uncontrollable norm.” (1)

Malevich’s concept of the “non-objective world” can be translated to the view of Earth or the planet itself as a non-objective entity. For Malevich, the objective world was the material, physical world of objects, and naturalistic representation that had traditionally been the focus of art. On the other hand, the non-objective world transcended this physical reality and existed in a higher, more spiritual, and universal plane.

In this context, Malevich likely saw the Earth as a material planet and a vessel or embodiment of the non-objective world. Rather than viewing the Earth as an objective physical entity, he may have perceived it as a manifestation of the transcendent, suprematist reality his art aimed to express. Just as his abstract, geometric paintings using basic shapes and colors aimed to evoke the non-objective world through a new visual language, the Earth itself, with its fundamental geometric form (a sphere) and its array of colors and elemental components, could be seen as a concrete representation or expression of that higher non-objective reality.

From this perspective, it becomes natural to conceptualize the Earth itself as the embodiment of a pure, non-objective world that transcends physical territories and geographical boundaries. In this interpretation, the Earth is not merely a symbolic representation of the non-objective realm but is that very non-objective world itself; the primordial Urwelt that resists reduction into the objective constructs of nations, borders, and mapped lands. It allows these constructs to continually territorialize and re-territorialize themselves upon its surface.

Malevich likely perceived the arbitrary lines drawn on maps and the artificial delineation of territories as imposing artificial, objective boundaries on what is ultimately a singular, transcendent, non-objective reality, the Earth in its undivided state. Just as his suprematist paintings eliminated recognizable objects and figures to reveal the pure essence of form and color, the Earth stripped of humanly defined borders and geographical markers could be viewed as the true non-objective world, a unified planetary entity existing in its authentic, undivided state. The divisions of countries, states, and regions are subjective constructs overlaid on the objective physical world. But the Earth itself, unencumbered by these human conceptions, represents the pure, primordial, non-objective world.
It is the ultimate non-objective world, which art can strive to capture and express but which fundamentally transcends the mapped territories and geographical boundaries of the objective realm.
The concept of the Earth as a pure, non-objective world that transcends geographical boundaries can be elaborated through the metaphor of a palimpsest. A palimpsest refers to a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced and new writing inscribed over it, yet traces of the earlier writing still remain underneath.

In this metaphorical framing, the surface of the Earth itself can be viewed as a vast palimpsest upon which the human constructs of nations, borders, and territorial divisions have been continuously inscribed and re-inscribed over time. However, underneath these transient markings lies the pure, primordial “text” of the non-objective world, the Earth in its fundamental, undivided past. Just as a palimpsest allows for endless re-writings and re-imaginings over the same surface, the Earth as the non-objective world offers a blank canvas that can be endlessly re-conceived and re-territorialized by human hands and ideological frameworks. The imposed borders and boundaries are but the latest inscriptions atop the pure, infinitely re-imaginable plane of the planetary whole.

Yet, much like the faded yet persistent traces of earlier writings on a palimpsest, the essential unity and non-objective reality of the Earth remains an indelible foundation beneath these temporary surface overlays of human geographical conceptions. Malevich’s philosophy would suggest that while nations and territories ebb and flow across the face of the Earth, the true non-objective world endures, a singular, transcendent reality waiting to be re-discovered and re-expressed through new perspectives and fresh abstractions, just as the palimpsest eternally invites new inscriptions.
The Earth as a non-objective world is, therefore, a boundless, malleable realm, continuously open to re-imaginings and re-articulations that peel away the layered accretions of objective boundaries to reveal the pure, protean essence pulsing beneath. It is a palimpsest of infinite creative and philosophical possibilities. Thanks to this operation of the Earth as the Urwelt, as Walter Benjamin emphasized, “history is the subject of a construction whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled full by now-time [Jetztzeit].” (2)

We are taught to imagine the past as stone, sealed and finished, while the future stretches before us like a horizon of possibility. Yet this is an illusion, the grammar of a time bent to power. The future, increasingly bound by calculation, prediction, and the cold circuitry of control, lies heavy with inevitability. What breathes, instead, is the past. It remains porous, fragile, like a vessel never fully closed, always ready to be reopened, refilled, transformed.

This fragility is not weakness in the pejorative sense, but the potentia of weak technologies. Every technical object, every shard of memory, bears within it a refusal of finality. They remain supple, awaiting the touch that reshapes them, the imagination that bends them toward other uses. The past is such a technology: not a relic to be guarded, but an instrument of reinvention, an unfinished script where forgotten voices wait to speak again.

Walter Benjamin called this act of awakening “revolution”: the sudden crack in time where buried stars flare once more. And Deleuze and Guattari, in their call for a “new Earth,” echo the same rhythm, an Earth not found but made, not given but continually sculpted. The Earth is no foundation; it is a canvas of trembling surfaces, where the past is endlessly re-scribed and futures dissolve like mist.

Here Malevich’s vision of the non-objective Earth comes to bear. For Malevich, the Earth stripped of its representational burden, freed from mimetic capture, becomes a pure field of forces, an Earth of abstraction, without figure or ground. This non-objective Earth resonates with the openness of weak technologies: it is not a stable object to be grasped, but an ever-shifting horizon to be inhabited, where forms emerge only to dissolve, where meaning itself is provisional, transitory, and plural.

It is in this register that Sunah Choi’s Monde shines. The moon isn’t merely an object hanging in the sky; it threads through romance, science, bedtime stories, and myth, multiplying its appearances. In German, der Mond gathers the moon into a solitary, masculine shell; yet die Monde scatters it like silver seeds across the sky, an astral chorus, a constellation of moons, infinite and plural. Choi’s work takes us into this plural register, where the moon is not one but many, a fragile multiplicity of lights and shadows, a chorus of possibilities.

Monde thus embodies the lunar quality of history itself: revolving, waxing, waning, reappearing under new skies. Each moon is a weak technology, porous and transformable, never fixed, always awaiting reactivation. Through Malevich’s non-objective Earth and Choi’s many moons, we glimpse the Earth itself not as object but as a shimmering multiplicity, unfinished, unfinalisable, and an archipelago of temporalities.

To dwell in this Earth of many moons is to live history otherwise: not as inheritance alone, but as perpetual invention, luminous and fragile, a cosmos of weak technologies endlessly remaking the sky. Malevich’s non-objective Earth already dislodged the ground from its objecthood, transforming it into an abstract field of pure forces and relations. By stripping the Earth of its representational burden, he opened the way for an ontology no longer tied to figure, ground, or mimetic capture. Yet where Malevich sought an Earth beyond objecthood, Sunah Choi extends this gesture into the cosmos. Her Monde multiplies Malevich’s non-objective Earth into many moons, scattering it across the night sky of imagination.

If Malevich’s Earth was liberated from objecthood, Choi’s moons are liberated from singularity. The German der Mond becomes die Monde: a proliferation, an astronomical plural. In this shift, the Earth is no longer only non-objective, but also cosmic: unfixed, lunar, and archipelagic. Choi carries Malevich’s abstraction into the domain of celestial imagination, reminding us that the Earth itself participates in a larger, shimmering multiplicity.

Through Monde, the weak technologies of history and memory are not only terrestrial but cosmic: fragile moons orbiting in shifting constellations, each awaiting reactivation. If Malevich freed us from the object, Choi frees us from the singular, opening a space where the Earth itself becomes one moon among many, luminous and unfinished, continually re-scribed across the sky.

(1) Kazimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Supermatism, New York: Dover, 2003, p. 20.
(2) Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Marcus Bullock, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, Cambridge, MA: Havard University Press, 2003, p. 395.

Text by Alex Taek-Gwang Lee (Kyung Hee University)

The text of Alex Taek-Gwang Lee was written for the group show The Earth is Thinking All Along... Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, North Macedonia, 06.11.2025 - 31.04.2026