2023
Oyster Mushroom, mycelium, wood, video projection
Emergent. A living, breathing mobile gallery
Part 2: Mycosymbiosis
Mobile Gallery Concept, Design, and Fabrication: Roberta Buiani, University of Toronto, Lorella Di Cintio, Toronto Metropolitan University, Ilze Briede (Kavi), York University;
Scientific advising: James Scott, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Emergent is a mobile gallery, an artwork, and an evolving – living – object.
As a gallery, it is a box with custom made openings installed on top of a bike trailer, designed to contain interdisciplinary artworks at the intersection of art and science. Emergent doesn’t provide a rigid narrative that spectators must follow. Spectators are free to experience its content and narratives on their own terms thanks to numerous points of access allowing different modes of exploration.
As an artwork, Emergent is designed to both have a distinctive identity and to accommodate different artists. Once they are entrusted with Emergent, artists are encouraged to modify its interior structure to house their own artwork. At the same time, they must adapt to its features, and the space around the gallery.
Emergent is also a living object. Every time it encounters a new place, it is entrusted to the care of different individuals who become responsible for its “well-being.” “Care” is an important premise for the successful completion of the collaboration.
Mycosymbiosis is an installation by Xiaojing Yan.
As a first generation Chinese Canadian Yan weaves together ideas of identity as complicated and complex, and a perspective on nature as transcending the boundaries of self and other, inside and outside, familiar and foreign. Yan inoculated the space adjacent to the external walls of the mobile gallery with three cultures of Oyster Mushrooms and recorded them as they emerged and gradually populated this interstitial space. A timelapse of their growth is projected on the walls inside the gallery. The resulting living sculpture will continue to transform in the next few weeks as temperatures and humidity fluctuate, welcoming a variety of symbiotic organisms that support, compete with, and feed off the mushrooms. Mycosymbiosis will thrive, shrink and dry together with, and thanks to, the myriads of living and non-living elements that host, sustain, and interact with it inside and outside.
We are thankful for the support of the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and York University CUPE3903/Faculty Relation Research Fund
This project was presented at the INTENSE INTERIORS 2023 Architecture and Film Symposium | Toronto Metropolitan University May 6 & 7, 2023