View this post on Instagram
After completing a monumental earth mural in Iceland, David Popa was traveling around Nordskot in northern Norway when he stumbled upon a small archipelago. Along the island’s rocky shore was a pristine sandbank, which quickly caught the artist’s attention. Could this be the site of a new project? He hadn’t worked with loose beach sand before, but he still decided to take the leap and experiment with the medium.
Titled Held, Popa’s newest earthwork is a tender celebration of love, as captured through the embrace between two figures. The artist created two separate compositions, each of which he engraved within the sand with the help of natural materials, including chalk and charcoal. Surrounding both works are the archipelago’s gray rocks, yellowing grass, and turquoise waters, producing an organic frame around the hugging subjects. As with Popa’s other projects, Held transforms the limits of the traditional canvas, relying instead upon the landscape and its contours to guide how the artwork should look.
“Scouting locations is about searching for resonance—finding places where the landscape feels like an extension of the piece I want to create,” Popa told My Modern Met in a 2024 interview.
As an artist whose practice is inseparable from the land, Popa accepts—and almost prefers—ephemerality. Once he completes an earthwork, he steps back, awaiting the moment in which the landscape will reclaim its surface yet again. Rather than mourning or seeking to physically preserve his artwork, he considers impermanence to be “honest.”
“Life is fleeting, fragile, and constantly changing. Why should art be any different?” he added in his interview. “Working with impermanence forces both me and the viewer to be present—to appreciate the work while it’s there, knowing it won’t last forever. The earth takes the work back, and in that, there’s a kind of poetic completion.”
Perhaps that’s why love resonated so strongly with Popa as a subject. Like any other sensation, whether positive or negative, affection waxes and wanes like the phases of the moon. With Held, the artist seems to suggest that being loved, if even for a short moment, is more valuable than not experiencing it at all, despite the grief involved in losing what once was. In Popa’s case, he explains that love as one directed toward the ocean.
“When I was turning 18, this wave of love hit me. I couldn’t explain it,” he writes in an Instagram post about Held. “Going north to Nordskot, I tried to create that feeling. This piece is me trying to carve a higher love—and maybe you can feel it for a moment, too.”
Limited-edition prints of Held will be released via Popa’s shop between November 13-17, 2025, with early access beginning on November 12. To learn more about the artist’s practice and his new projects, visit David Popa’s website.
For his newest project, Held, David Popa carved a monumental portrait of an embrace into the pristine, white sand of a small archipelago in northern Norway.
View this post on Instagram
David Popa: Website | Instagram | Shop
Related Articles:
Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Inspires One Man To Build a Sprawling Retreat Filled With Lavender Spirals
Winners of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards Highlight Real Beauty in Our Environment
Land Artist Leaves Incredible Mosaics Made Entirely of Pebbles All Around Thailand