In recent years we are witnessing a newfound interest in mushrooms. Their form is being taken up by artists, designers and fashion designers, and their roots – called mycelium – are being used to synthesize new eco-sustainable materials. Why is this happening, and who are the key players in this new trend? In the next few lines we will address various discourses, which see the mushroom as the protagonist of a revolution, both from an iconographic and a solving point of view, with a view to becoming a potential and viable answer to our problems.
Mushrooms are indeed everywhere, not only visually, in the arts and visual culture but, more importantly, on our bodies and in our habitats. They are invisible elements on which we depend for survival. Suffice it to say that drugs are made from fungi, or that the entire subsoil is made up of a fungal network, called the Wood Web Wide, which connects trees to each other and allows 90% of plants to survive.
In the common imagination, fungi are something mysterious, about which we do not know enough and which we often associate with the classic fairy-tale figure, with the red hat and white polka dots. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a clear example of the magical dimension associated with mushrooms, which pervades our minds from an early age, as is the psychedelic art of the 1960s, which sprung from hallucinogenic trips caused, as it happens, by the parasitic rye mushroom, known by the acronym LSD. A further and immediate visual link arose from the works of the famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who also recently ventured into the world of fashion, collaborating with the luxury brand Louis Vuitton.
However, you know, the most beautiful things are also those that hide some surprises. These red and white mushrooms – the amanita muscaria – as beautiful as they are, we know very well that they are the most poisonous and deadly. Here then the “mushroom mystery” thickens. Their bivalent nature swings from a benevolent side to an evil one, constituting a frightening dichotomy, and, moreover, their often inhospitable and unattractive appearance has over the years caused a kind of indifference and unwillingness to learn more about them.
From the immortal mushroom to The Last of Us
In fact, if we look at the history of art, or human history more generally, we notice how this “alien-looking” element has always fascinated us. Indeed, it is an iconography that recurs often in Greek and Roman art: it is present in mosaics, sculptures, as well as in biblical representations, as well as in Renaissance ones.
Today, however, more attention is being paid to the mushroom, not only from a symbolic point of view but as an element capable of rethinking the world. With this in mind, contemporary nonfiction has contributed to the awareness towards this element, which is capable of bringing great changes to the earth and our way of life. Asian-born American anthropologist Anna Tsing‘s famous essay “The Mushroom at the End of the World” on the matsutake mushroom highlights the eternal and indestructible component of mushrooms. They have in fact been present since the beginning of time and are likely to be present at the end as well, growing “on the ruins of capitalism,” as the book’s subtitle states. Matsutake fungi are able to survive in any habitat, even on radioactive soil. They were in fact the first organisms to be born and grow on the soil affected by the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, fatefully, appear as mushroom-shaped clouds.
Even more, in a more abstract vein, Merlin Sheldrake in “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures” talks about how fungi alter the flow of our lives. “They eat rocks, generate soil, digest pollutants, can provide nourishment to plants as well as kill them, survive in space, induce hallucinations, produce food and medicine, manipulate animal behavior, and influence the composition of Earth’s atmosphere. Fungi are a key to understanding the planet we live on, but also the way we think, feel and behave.”
If mushrooms are able to grant us life, they are also able to take it away. It is precisely on this that directors and art directors “play” who choose the mushroom as the protagonist and triggering agent of apocalyptic and catastrophic situations, as in the case of the video game and the, later, very famous TV series, The Last of Us.
From Höller’s upside-down mushrooms to Anicka Yi’s metamorphoses
It often happens that art reflects what mass culture proposes, capturing its interests and perversions or, conversely, society absorbs what art investigates. The same happens with mushrooms, analyzed and proposed by artists in different keys of interpretation. Speaking of the contemporary, first among all is Carsten Höller (1961), who chooses precisely the mushroom, in particular the aforementioned poisonous amanita muscaria, as the protagonist element of his works (in addition to his famous slides). Iconic are his “Upside Down Mushroom Room” installed in the Milan headquarters of Fondazione Prada, or the more recent work “Giant Triple Mushroom” exhibited by the Gagosian Gallery in Paris. Höller is fascinated by this type of mushroom as notoriously toxic and hallucinogenic, as well as for its crucial role in the development of shamanism. Moreover, as we have already explained, this fungal type is present in our imaginary baggage from an early age and, therefore, is capable of activating synchronic mechanisms in the viewer.
In visual art the mushroom is rampant, from Yayoi Kusama to even crypto art, as in the case of the AES+F collective who in their NFT “Psychosis Mushroom Field” depict a series of typical risotto mushrooms (the cantharellus cibarius) invaded by what appear to be vaginas.
The mushroom shape also lands in design, which has long since been influenced by its particular structure, especially in the creation of lamps, such as the one produced by Artemide “Nessino” designed by Giancarlo Mattioli, or like Jonathan Anderson‘s most recent seats presented in the garden of Palazzo Isimbardi in Milan during Design Week 2023. Some up-and-comers also choose this mysterious form as their subject, an example being the young Jihyun Kim with her ceramics, which take up the shape and textures of our subject today.
The fungus, however, is not only bizarre and intricate in its outward form, but it is also so in its structure; in fact, it becomes something to be unveiled from a scientific perspective. In this sense, the artist Anicka Yi, with her recent exhibition Metaspore at Hangar Bicocca in Milan, fits in with works in which spores, fungi and bacteria are the protagonists of a metamorphosis. These different organisms are in fact inserted between two sheets of glass, allowing their life and therefore their evolution. In this way, the works reveal coexistence and evolution, addressing issues such as identity and social justice.
Buildings that grow on their own: is it possible with mushrooms?
Staying in the scientific sphere, as anticipated, the mushroom becomes the protagonist of a possible ecological and eco-sustainable revolution. For years we have been searching for new biomaterials, the most popular and famous being undoubtedly those made from hemp, but the mushroom also has enormous potential.
From mycelium – to explain it in short, the “roots” of fungi – fabrics and hides, bricks, glass, plastics or even fuels can be made. In recent years, numerous companies have begun to use this new material and exploit it in a variety of ways. Starting with architecture, which has been able to devise structures that are literally alive. These are in fact buildings that grow on their own through the development of a structural substrate that takes advantage of living mycelium. The largest building made in this way is called Hy-Fi and is an organically shaped tower built in 2014 by the design firm The Living studio, exhibited at MoMA in New York. The fungal bricks grow and climb on a support structure without consuming any kind of energy but rather, in a completely natural way, without even using human labor.
This material, due to its robustness, can therefore replace bricks and become a method of combating environmental issues in the years to come. Designer and entrepreneur Maurizio Montalti, who founded Mogu, an industrial bio-fabrication company studying a way out of the Anthropocene (as our geological era is called), knows this well. According to Montalti, the mogu material has technical and emotional-experiential qualities, such that it could replace the synthetic materials we are used to but, in this sense, the cognitive gap needs to be overcome. In simpler words, as is the case with wood, which over the years transforms and changes its appearance, in organic materials this process is more rapid and visible, so objects produced from this material cannot promise that eternity to which we aspire and to which we are accustomed. Therefore, this change necessitates an evolution of thinking that, undoubtedly, is scary.
Mycelium also lands in fashion: from Balenciaga to Hermès!
As a conclusion to this long and articulate discourse, which would require further elaboration, let us land on the catwalks of high fashion. As much as the mushroom-not the red and beautiful one we have talked so much about-doesn’t look so appealing, it has managed to make its way even into the ideas and ambitions of the greatest fashion designers. Indeed, 2021 was dubbed the year of mushrooms for fashion, and two years on, we have seen some interesting developments.
One of the first brands to embrace this new material was Stella McCartney, which presented the much-discussed Frayme Mylo bag, made of mycelium leather. Mylo is also the universal name by which to call this new fabric, produced by the company Bolt Threads, which was also chosen by Adidas, Bering, Lulelemon, and later by Kering, the group with super-luxury brands such as Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, and Saint Laurent. Hermès also recently produced a new version of its Vittoria bag, but made of Sylvania, another type of mushroom-based leather produced by the startup MycoWorks.
The mushroom is now unstoppable, advancing in all fields and begging for acceptance because, however widespread, it still remains an alternative and non-preferred choice. We just have to wait and, as we can, encourage this new eco-sustainable and mysterious wave.
