Desire

Relating back from my previous studies, there is another ancient material that has been existing on the planet along with food clay and human: fungi. Fungi exist on earth way before human; almost everything starts from fungi and they are still everywhere in our daily life now. There are many types of fungi, the most common examples are mold, moss, bacteria and mushrooms. We need them to help us digest food, cure illness and cook food.

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The relationship between fungi and human are very similar to the way water and clay. Human relies on fungi and it relies on us. I did several experiments on planting mold, moss and mushroom onto the clay.

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The work [Desire] is a 1:1 scale unfired clay sculpture of myself, seated on a chair. Inside the sculpture, there are red mushroom seeds planted in the clay. As time passed, the seed will absorb the moisture from the clay, allowing the mushrooms to grow out from the inside. The growing process of the mushrooms will be causing the sculpture to crack and finally collapse. The feet of the sculpture was made by porcelain, and they were the only parts of the whole body that have been fired. This was to hint that human is the only species that can walk with two feet, and have complex desires other than living and eating.

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The chair represents a comfortable living environment created by our existing technology, and the bright mushrooms that break out represent the complex emotions and different desires of human beings. These desires are not the same as simple survival and eating desires. They are more cumbersome and small. For example, wanting a better job, wanting to travel on holidays, or even want a new phone on birthdays. These complex and trivial desires will eventually come together to create a new survival desire for modern people.