De Wortelaars (The rooting ones)
For the central courtyard of the elderly living community De Toonladder in Almere, Fleur van den Berg designed De Wortelaars. These figures symbolize the search for new balance and the act of taking root in a new, often final place. One flies through life, another struggles, while a third has lost its way — cut at the feet and replanted upside down, a metaphor for dementia. Yet even here, new life appears: a small shoot has started to grow.
The figures are rooted in the cycle of life, where growth and decline are inseparable and each ending carries the seed of renewal. Shaped by the four elements, they appear as archetypes: one rises lightly with a body of clouds and a radiant sun for a head; another wrestles with the weight of the world, its form divided between land, water, and ice; while a third stands inverted, its fiery legs ending in soles marked with tree rings, like the memory of a felled tree.