Curated by Alba Colomo, this exhibition is one of the winning projects of the Comisart 2020 Call and it intertwines a series of works that reflect interdependence and the tentacular relationships that sustain life.

Unlike most organisms on the planet, fungi don’t find food in the world and put it inside their bodies, where it is digested and absorbed. They have a different strategy: they digest the world where it is and then absorb it into their bodies. They feed by means of mycelium, a dynamic underground network linking the roots of plants that lets them share nutrients and resources, thus supporting the wellbeing of all the organisms in an ecosystem. It is an invisible relational support system in which multiple species systematically organise themselves by creating a series of symbiotic structures offering mutual support based on trust and the power of collectivity.

Human societies are intimately linked with fungi, since not only do we share a living world with them, but our very survival as a species inevitably depends on living side by side, closely intertwined, with fungi and a multitude of other species of microorganisms.

In contrast to the capitalist logic that promotes individualism and the superiority and independence of the human species over what we have chosen to call “nature”, the exhibition Digesting the World Where It Is explores the need to rethink ourselves as an animal species and to situate ourselves within an interspecies network—to embody this diverse collectivity so that we can get actively involved and take care of it. Observing and copying fungi patterns of behaviour may be a way of creating systems that enable us to cast off our anthropocentric supremacy and reinvent new, worthwhile ways of living and dying together.

Digesting the World Where It Is intertwines a series of works made between the 1980s and the present day that reflect ideas of interdependence and the tentacular relationships that crisscross us and sustain life, probing the physical and emotional limits of the ecosystems we inhabit and the inherent vulnerability of all living beings.