KATYA BRYSKINA

Between 2017 and 2022, I was deeply fascinated by cultivating mycelium in the air and creating living installations during exhibitions, observing how they evolved daily.

 

This raised a series of questions: what can we learn, observe, and understand from an organism that typically remains hidden, growing in darkness beneath the earth?

 

For this project, I designed incubators that underwent multiple iterations, providing the essential conditions—humidity, darkness, controlled temperature, and a sterile environment—to sustain the mycelium's life while on display. This offered a rare glimpse into the unseen beauty of mycelium and its uniquely evolving behaviour each time. As a result, I documented mycelium’s adaptive growth strategies in the new environment for the organism and the emergence of living bio-infrastructures in response to these changes.

 

A significant part of the project involved weaving. Weaving is mathematical and, at the same time, soft, linking to nature’s flexibility, plasticity and adaptability. I imagined this project as the beginning of Living Megastructures that constantly evolve. On the one hand, it served as a method to guide the initial nutrient pathways and establish the environmental framework. On the other hand, it was a human, historically mainly female, craft and, for me, particularly, what my mother taught me.

 

I remain deeply inspired by this organism’s remarkable intelligence and delicate beauty—a balance of resilience and vulnerability. Watching it adapt to new environments feels like witnessing something entirely new—like a glimpse of hope for a better future, with endless possibilities still waiting to unfold. I envision multiple directions to take this project further across both digital and physical realms, unfolding more of organism’s magics, what it could do and how we can engage with it.