We’ve taken dogs and cats into our homes, trained hawks to hunt for us and taught pigeons to deliver our letters.

Our relationship with sheep, though, is more of a symbiosis.

For centuries, we have relied on sheep’s wool for clothing and blankets, and they relied on us for shearing. Now, sheep can’t molt without human help, though we’re using little of their wool. Because consumers today favor softer and less expensive synthetic fibers, an enormous output of raw wool — estimated by researchers at more than 317,000 tons worldwide — goes to waste each year.

This paradox of mutual reliance is at the center of the exhibition, “Formafantasma — Oltre Terra,” at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, from Feb. 15 through July 13. The show, by the design studio Formafantasma,66jogo is billed as examining the “co-evolution” of sheep and humans across some 11,000 years and contains thoughts about how we might improve the relationship.

On Sept. 11, despite the excitement of the moment, Kendric was unable to keep his eyes open as he lay in his hospital bed at Children’s National Hospital in Washington because of the drugs he had been given in preparation for his treatment.

Formafantasma, founded by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin and based in Milan and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, creates products for international companies such as Lexus, Tiffany and Prada, as well as exhibitions for museums and galleries. Its unique design objects have been acquired by arts institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Image“Mr. Healey’s Sheep” (1838) by William Henry Davis is included in the exhibition.Credit...Collection Lincolnshire County Council: Museum of Lincolnshire Life

“For me they are among the most important designers of their generation,” said Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of Serpentine, a London-based art institute which hosted a 2022 exhibition by Formafantasma, that focused on a different raw material: wood.

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