Fungi
Before men and their cities. Before the trees that crept up towards the sky. Before the first creature left the ocean, there they were: silent architects of life, guardians of the hidden, weavers of the endless web that sustains the world. Fungi.
Before men and their cities. Before the trees that crept up towards the sky. Before the first creature left the ocean, there they were: silent architects of life, guardians of the hidden, weavers of the endless web that sustains the world. Fungi.
Every fungus that sprouts in the semi-darkness is a sculpture of fate. Each filament is a bridge to the unknown. Their impossible forms are hymns in soft stone. Their geometries, delirious witnesses of an art before Art. They seem fragile, but they can break through pavements and move heavy stones. They seem insignificant, but they often cover thousands of hectares. They seem fleeting, but they can be over nine thousand years old, like the legendary Armillaria ostoyae that inhabits the mountains of Oregon and weighs hundreds of tonnes.
Whether in the sediments of the seabed or on the surface of deserts, in the valleys of Antarctica or the forests of Siberia, in outer space or inside our bodies, fungi are everywhere: every year they release fifty million tonnes of spores (equivalent to the weight of five hundred thousand blue whales), making them the largest source of living particles in the air.
There's no society that hasn't venerated them and feared them at the same time. Our history is intertwined with theirs. They are one and the same. They were part of the Neanderthals' diet and have been used as a remedy in Asia for millennia. They can be seen in cave paintings, Egyptian tombs, and medieval illuminated manuscripts. They appear in all types of literature: from the Rigveda and the great Greek tragedies to the Talmud and the Scandinavian sagas, as well as in the works of Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley and William Burroughs. Yet they remain an enigma, a mystery that challenges our principles and undermines our beliefs.
Here is a collection that descends into the depths to claim the hidden. That turns the silent power of metamorphosis into a piece of jewellery. And that elevates the invisible to the category of myth.
Because in the darkness beats a great heart. And in silence, eternity is born.
