Untitled (Pleurotus djamor) Original by Zsófia Jakab
Dried pink oyster mushroom, resin
I’m interested in exploring humans’ relationship with fungi, the fascinating organisms that remain outside of the boundaries of classification. They are neither plants nor animals, yet they stand somewhere closer to humans. This similarity often causes pathogenic fungi to be extremely difficult to be treated, as they are too similar our body. Biologist Merlin Sheldrake declares that everyone is a “soft-edged” ecology, emphasising the porousness of our body’s boundary.
I’m exploring these ideas to highlight the importance of critical thinking about our relationship with other organisms, both surrounding us and living inside us. I think that anthropocentric thinking is quite harmful to the planet and this kind of research that decentres us would help us realise the harm we are doing to the planet and other beings by proxy; and hopefully change our behaviour on the long run.
I’m an interdisciplinary artist from Hungary, based in Scotland. My practice is closely supported by research. I primarily work with sculpture; however, my practice tends to be a mixture of different techniques and media, combining printmaking, painting, textiles, and video work as well. Both in my art practice and research, I’m drawn to ideas and investigations of liminal states, metamorphoses, and abjection by observing them in the context of surrealism, philosophy, and posthumanism. Generally, in my work I’m looking into the state of metamorphoses when something is neither one thing nor another but something in-between. I’m particularly interested in exploring the ways human (bodies) relate to different entities, what it means to be human; something that is constantly changing and where its (uncertain) boundaries are.
www.zsofiajakab.co.uk
www.instagram.com/zsfiv.jkb
