2017
Mycelium, cultivated lingzhi mushrooms, wood chips and wood
dimensions variable.
I am fascinated by the way technological advancement gives humans the illusion of mastery over nature. In response, I design controlled environments that gradually yield to organic processes. When cultivating Lingzhi, I initiate growth by placing woodchips and spores into a mold and regulating humidity, temperature, and light. At first, the form appears engineered. Yet once the mycelium binds the substrate and the mold is removed, the sculpture continues to grow on its own terms. Roots thicken, surfaces shift, spores fall and settle as fine brown dust. Authorship begins to migrate. What started as design becomes negotiation.
This practice stages a collaboration between human intention and biological intelligence. Lingzhi embodies processes of adaptation, self-organization, and regeneration. The work does not merely depict these qualities; it performs them.
At the same time, Lingzhi carries deep cultural resonance. In Chinese tradition it signifies vitality and longevity, appearing alongside deer believed to locate sacred mushrooms in the wild, and echoing myths of the Jade Rabbit who prepares an elixir of immortality on the moon. These stories form a secondary layer within the work, not as illustration, but as inherited ways of understanding transformation and endurance.
Lingzhi thus operates simultaneously as living organism, cultural symbol, and emergent material. Its growth reveals a tension between control and surrender, fragility and persistence, ecological process and sculptural form.