Armillaria

Armillaria investigates the Armillaria ostoyae, the world’s largest living organism, a 10,000-year-old fungus spanning three square miles and weighing 35,000 tons. Through constructed narratives and psychic landscapes, the project examines our entanglement with vast ecological networks. In summer 2024, I traveled to Eastern Oregon to visit the organism with the mycologist that has been studying it for decades. I brought back a fragment of the mycelium to grow in my studio. I photographed its slow growth and created spore prints in the darkroom. Sitting next to this ancient organism prompted me to reflect on individuality, with its ability to separate, yet always return as one. The images evoke the uncertainty and surreal nature of the natural world, inviting us to question what we know and use fungi as a lens to reflect on the larger systems we inhabit.