2022
Mycelium, cultivated lingzhi mushrooms and wood chips
In Lingzhi Baby, the mushroom becomes a site where vulnerability and regeneration coexist. Lingzhi is cultivated within controlled conditions, yet its growth ultimately exceeds intention, binding, expanding, and reshaping itself over time. The sculpture stages this tension between care and autonomy, containment and emergence.
Rather than symbolizing rebirth in a purely metaphorical sense, the work embodies cyclical process. Lingzhi grows through repetition and renewal, releasing spores that initiate further life. Within Chinese tradition, it carries associations with vitality and longevity, yet here those meanings unfold through material behavior rather than narrative illustration.
Lingzhi Baby proposes transformation not as dramatic rupture, but as continuous adaptation. It invites reflection on how life persists through networks of dependence, where fragility and resilience are inseparable conditions of growth.