Hand-made fungus papers (amanita muscaria, Armillaria luteobubalina), recycled kozo & cellulose-based fibres, rice glue, cotton thread.
50 x 49 cm
Suspended fungal papers, patchy, torn and unbounded, gather here in fragile assemblage. Through the paper-making process, these sheets resisted a certain fixedness; drying torn and unstable yet impossible to discard. Anna Tsing’s ‘unruly edges’ echoes through their precarity, wherein life is described as emerging from disturbance, contamination and decay. Composed of Amanita muscaria and Armillaria luteobubalina sporing bodies - species often cast as invasive or toxic by humans, ‘rot not ruin’ lingers with all the messy, uneasy labour fungi embody and enact. In all their unravelling, metamorphosing, metabolising, regenerating beauty. Decay is not collapse but an opportunity for transformation. Against the smooth surfaces and relentless tempo of growth in late-capitalist reality, decomposition unfolds alternate modes of world-making. Death is all but the engine of life.