This artist creates ethereal mushroom sculptures like something out of a fairy dream

For these artists across Canada, nature is more than a muse or subject: nature is an artistic collaborator, directly engaged in the process of making art and deepening our understanding of the natural world around us. In Natural Collaborators, we meet artists who share creative control with the wild. The wind, the trees, the grass, the plants, the sun — they're all potential partners in art-making, and what they have to express could surprise you.

In August of 2021, Xiaojing Yan took CBC Arts on a walk through the woods. The location, a park near the artist's home in Markham, Ont., is a spot she knows well, and when summer turns to fall, the forest becomes a forager's paradise. "If we'd gone in September, we would have found all kinds of mushrooms. Bigger, fancy ones," says Yan, remembering that day and the short expedition that's been captured in her episode of Natural Collaborators. 

The short doc explores Yan's interest in mushrooms, those of the lingzhi variety especially, a fungus that figures in the culture and folklore of her native China. She's developed a sort of creative relationship with the lingzhi, learning to grow them herself and employing these shelf-like organisms in all manner of artworks: sculpture, video, painting and even VR.

On Natural Collaborators, she shares the origins of Lingzhi Girl, the series that started it all. In form, it's a collection of sculptures: life-sized busts of young women, figures meant to remind the viewer of a fairy-tale heroine, perhaps, or the artist herself. Many are cast from the same mold, and yet, no two works are completely alike. Nor are they entirely Yan's creation. 

To make a Lingzhi Girl, the artist fills a sculpted vessel with a special mixture containing live mycellium. If nurtured successfully, mushrooms will sprout and eventually complete their life cycle in an explosion of powdery brown spores, at which point Yan finishes the process by baking the sculpture, thus ending the mycellium's growth.

That's how a single Lingzhi Girl comes into the world, but Yan's experiments are far from over. We reached her by phone to hear where she's taking the project next. 

CBC Arts: What's happened since the shoot? Are you still working on the Lingzhi Girl series?

Yes, I actually grew another two or three mushroom heads like the mushroom girls, and I'm working on other lingzhi mushroom sculptures as well. Like, I have two cats that are grown out of lingzhi mushrooms.  

I understand that the forms you choose have a lot of meaning behind them, so why did you choose a cat?

Yeah, it has a lot to do with the pandemic, actually. I have a cat, and during the regular times I like to travel and I go to my studio a lot, so I don't really spend a lot of time with her. But during the pandemic time, when we were grounded at home, the cat became such an important member of the family (laughs). So I made a cat sculpture.

The pose looks like she's sleeping, but it also looks like she's dead. So there's kind of a double interpretation for the work. It's talking about loss — life lost — those kinds of things. 

I saw you've been making paintings of the Lingzhi Girls recently.

Yeah! You know, it's like in the video where I show the process. When a mushroom sculpture matures, it releases the lingzhi mushroom spores, and I actually collect those lingzhi mushroom spores. They're bronze colour, like cocoa powder, and I use them as a pigment. I mix them with a glue agent and then I squeeze this paste onto canvas to paint these textures, and they look like mushrooms — like layers of mushrooms. I also mix it with water to paint portraits of the Lingzhi Girls.

When did you start making pigment from the spores?

Basically at the same time that I started to grow my mushroom sculptures — so, after my first sculpture was successfully cultivated [in 2015].

I feel it's very interesting that the sculptures, the Lingzhi Girls, they grow mushrooms, and then I also use the spores from those mushrooms to paint portraits of them. Everything is just mushrooms. There's no other material.

I see it as a way to use the most from the resources we have. It's a way to reduce waste and to think about nature, about the environment and about resources — sustainability and everything. 

Are the spores alive? Do the paintings continue to grow after the pigment is on the paper?

They may still be alive, but to be able to have mushrooms germinate and grow, the conditions are very strict. It's hard to do. 

You've become an expert at doing it. Watching the video, it was interesting to see how this was very much an experiment for you at the beginning. You didn't know how things were going to look in the end.

No, I didn't!

Did you imagine you'd still be working this way all these years later? What keeps you working with mycelium?

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. When I first started working with mushrooms, I bought ready-grown mushrooms from the store, and I had them cast into bronze. At the time, I was using lingzhi mushrooms because of the Chinese cultural connotation: it's the mushroom of immortality and also it's in a lot of designs and patterns — clouds, waves. They're all derived from the lingzhi mushroom and it has a lot of history in China. So I wasn't thinking about using the mushroom itself as material, it was more like a symbol. 

Where the mushrooms grow from the sculpture, what shape they're going to grow into: it is totally out of my control.- Xiaojing Yan, artist

After I did my first installation with a mushroom concept I went back to China, and just by coincidence I went to a farm where they were growing those mushrooms — like a pick-your-own kind of thing. I was amazed. When I was little, you know, they were something mythical, powerful. Seeing them mass-produced kind of amazed me, and it gave me the idea of working with the mushroom — using it as a sculptural material. Let's see how far I can go with it! So I just started my experimentation, learning how to grow mushrooms. I watched a lot of YouTube videos. (laughs)

For me, I think the very exciting part is that it's unpredictable. I can only control the sculpture to a certain point. After that, I leave it to nature. Where the mushrooms grow from the sculpture, what shape they're going to grow into: it is totally out of my control. 

For the Lingzhi Girl, I have 20 sculptures now from the same mold, but they all look very different. 

I enjoy the process. You're growing something, you're nurturing. You know, it's like taking care of something, it's tender — and it's not just over a few days, it's a few months' process.  

I have a little garden in my backyard. I like to grow plants and flowers and stuff, and I find that very soothing. Maybe that's also an aspect of [the art] that satisfies me. 

That's a beautiful idea to think about: the care that's involved in making your art. How else are you working with mycelium these days? Are there any new projects that you're pursuing? Do you have any mushroom sculptures on the go right now?

Yeah, actually — and I still do my experimentation, figuring out the best formula for the mushrooms to grow.

Last year, I was commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum to create a sculpture for the Tiger Year, and it's now on display in their Chinese gallery space. Next year will be the Rabbit Year, so I am going to use one of my mushroom rabbits for this commission. I have probably 14 or 15 rabbits grown already, so I will take one and give it to them. Next year if you go to ROM you will see it.

Also, I'm working on a VR project. I'm creating a utopian fantasy world where I'm putting 3D models of the mushroom sculptures. The viewer can go in and look around. 

Sometimes when I do exhibitions in a gallery space it's hard to create the ideal woody setting. [With VR] you can create a setting like the woods — you can create something more ethereal. But it's such a challenge (laughs). It's the same as when I tried to figure out how to grow mushrooms. Now I'm taking on this new challenge: learning how to create VR. And it's more complicated than the mushrooms!

See more of Xiaojing Yan's work on her website.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.