Underground Landscape

The panel set "Underground Landscape" was created as an exploration and visualization of the barely visible, yet crucial ecosystems unfolding beneath our feet.

While we go about our business above the earth's surface and take it for granted, fungal mycelium, bacteria, and other microorganisms living within it do "their job“ that is essential to our survival and well-being.

By bringing this very underground world into focus, this work uses the soil and the life within it both as a medium and as a co-creator of the installation.

Through its growth on the canvas, the fungal mycelium gave the installation unique colors, textures, and a tactile experience. Soil samples taken from the location, rich in various minerals as well as organic matter, were transformed into paints that speak of diversity. The purple pigment produced by cultivating the soil-dwelling bacterium Janthinobacterium lividum speaks of the life and beauty that we cannot see with the naked eye.