Estúdio de Escultura 2025 • Projeto Semestral
Rubric:
Title/Subject
Keywords
Presentation/Description
Development
Bibliography
Reference Authors
1. Series Title/Topic:
Title: Mycelia Materna: Networks of Expectation and Resistance
Caption: Fungal Discourse and Material Investigations of Women's Performative Competence Through Sculpture
2. Keywords:
Mycelium
Superwoman
Manufactured Incompetence
Transformation
Emotional Scaffolding
Decomposition
Competence
3. Presentation/Description:
In Paul Stamets' Mycelium Running, oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) are described as persistent, capable, able to break down organic matter, process toxins, adapt to any substrate, and fruit in waves despite various environmental conditions. They simply do the work, over and over. I see a parallel to how women are expected to embody this same relentless competence, to become "superwomen" who can handle everything thrown at them. As Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" suggests in her measured spoken word delivery, "Here come the planes / They're American planes," there is an automatic expectation that women will catch what falls, and always be the ones with their "arms open."
But this expectation has created a trap. The more capable women become, the more those around them retreat into manufactured incompetence, a strategic helplessness that ensures women remain the default fixers, managers, and emotional crutches. The invisible labor Arlie Hochschild describes as the "second shift" is not just unseen, it is actively produced by a system, partially created and certainly perpetuated by women themselves, that requires women to prove their strength by carrying increasingly impossible loads.
This body of work explores competence as a material condition—something that can be seen, touched, held, and suspended. Through bronze-cast mushrooms emerging from decomposing wood, I examine the moment between capability and collapse, the metallic pause where everything is held together, barely. These pieces ask: What happens when competence becomes a cage? When the ability to handle everything becomes the reason you must? What knowledge lives in the body when the mind has gone blank?
4. Works in the Series
Initial Work: Pleurotus Materna
This first work is a small group of wax and clay mushroom forms with fabricated legs, creatures that feel strange and precarious. One has three legs and looks as if it is caught mid-step, perhaps escaping or just moving forward because it has to. When they are clustered together, they suggest collective strength, but also reflect the exhausting sense that women have to be constantly mobilized, always ready, always capable. They reference the biological resilience of oyster mushrooms and the superwoman myth—someone who processes everything, adapts to anything, and never collapses. But their small scale and awkward charm push back against any heroic commentary. They are not winning, they are surviving.
Core Works: Bronze and Wood Series
The project evolved from these initial wax forms into a series of cast bronze works that use decomposing wood as substrate, making the structural labor that holds systems together visible. Each piece in this series explores a different aspect of competence, endurance, and the body's memory of care work.
"Instructions for Breathing That I Wrote While Holding My Breath"
Decomposed grapevine, 3D printed PLA, automotive paint, epoxy resin
120 cm × 12 cm × 12 cm
2025
I am iterating on this piece which will be called:
"Instructions for Breathing That I Wrote While Holding My Breath (Second Try)"
Decomposed grapevine, bronze
120 cm × 12 cm × 12 cm
2025
(PHOTOS TO COME]
This piece began with the physical sensation of holding my breath, that metallic, frozen moment when the body realizes it has stopped breathing somewhere between tasks. The grapevine branch is thick, knotted, and twisted from years of growing under pressure. It sprawls horizontally because that is what happens when one has been bearing weight for too long. One does not continue to grow up; instead you grow out, adapt, and endure.
The bronze oyster mushrooms growing from the branch are frozen at peak fruiting, clusters of capability that will never complete their cycle—never rot, release, or rest. Initially, I attempted to create these mushrooms through 3D printing the mushrooms and gilding them with gold leaf. This was unsuccessful, as I was unhappy with the gold color and finish. I then coated the mushrooms with antique gold automotive paint and epoxy resin, seeking that metallic preservation. However, the layered effect felt too synthetic, lacking the warmth and weight the piece demanded. I have manipulated the 3D model to build moulds from which to cast the mushrooms individually in bronze.
The transition to bronze casting will provide the necessary gravitas, as these mushrooms will now carry the permanence of metal, the weight of competence that has calcified into something precious and untouchable. They represent what happens when capability becomes entombed at its moment of peak utility, beautiful in a way that makes you wonder at what cost.
This is about that suspended instant before the breath breaks. The terrible, glittering pause where everything is just barely held together.
"Self-Portrait of the One That Saves All the Passwords"
Grapevine branch, bronze-cast branch segments, bronze oyster mushrooms
115 cm x 70 cm x 40 cm
2025
This piece emerged from thinking about the invisible architecture of care work and the mental load of remembering, the organizational labor that goes unacknowledged. The deer antler-shaped branch suggests both growth and trophy, rebirth and objectification. The bronze-cast branch pieces create a visible armature, making infrastructure itself the subject. These cast bronze components include support structures and mounts for mushroom forms, revealing how women's labor becomes the foundation everyone else depends on without acknowledging it.
The mushrooms emerging from this substrate represent the endless fruiting expected of women's competence, the passwords saved, the appointments remembered, the emotional database maintained. The permanence of metal against organic material creates a specific tension: women's competence gets treated as both infinite and expendable.
"Instructions My Hands Remember When My Mind Has Gone Blank"
Grapevine branch, cast bronze
50 cm x 20 cm x 25 cm
2025
This work focuses purely on embodied knowledge, on muscle memory and the way the body carries competence even when consciousness fails. The grapevine's twisted nature, with its contortions and knots, becomes a record of adaptation and endurance. By casting a segment of the branch in bronze, I highlight the moment when organic capability transforms into permanent expectation, when what the hands know becomes what the hands must always do.
The piece explores how women's bodies become repositories of care knowledge, how certain gestures become automatic, how competence writes itself into muscle and bone. I ask the question of what it means when the body remembers but the self has forgotten, when your hands can do the work but you can no longer recall why or how you learned.
"Portrait of My Last Nerve and Who Will Test It Next"
Small wax mushroom form, black power strip
20 cm x 10 cm x 7 cm
2025
This smallest piece carries disproportionate weight. A single wax mushroom perched on the corner of a power strip, fragile, absurd, darkly humorous. It speaks to that final thread of patience, that last reserve of capability, balanced precariously on the infrastructure of modern life. The power strip, with its multiplicity of outlets, its capacity to distribute energy to multiple demands simultaneously, becomes the perfect substrate for this precarious mushroom.
Unlike the bronze works, this piece maintains the vulnerability of wax, emphasizing how close we always are to melting under pressure. It is a portrait of emotional labor at its breaking point, where the mundane task of managing power—both literal and metaphorical—becomes the site of potential collapse.
5. Material Investigation
I am working with organic materials juxtaposed against industrial processes to reflect the clash between natural capacity and manufactured expectation. Found wood, decomposing grapevine branches, serve as the weathered substrate, the raw and often difficult conditions women navigate. Bronze casting solidifies expectation into permanent structure, transforming temporary capability into eternal demand.
The casting process became its own metaphor. Making molds from wood, oyster mushrooms, and my own sculpted forms comments on reproductive labor, creating vessels designed to birth identical, replaceable forms over and over. Working with lost-wax and sand casting techniques, I am learning these processes as part of the conceptual investigation itself, letting the labor of learning mirror the labor being examined.
Surface treatments like patina and oxidation suggest enzyme activity, the visible wear of constant processing. The natural color palette emphasizes contrast: organic wood tones against bronze's warm metallics, highlighting the gap between what's given and what's demanded.
6. Conceptual Approach
This work examines the myth of the superwoman, not to celebrate resilience, but to question why resilience is required. The mushroom forms and branches embody paradox: they are capable yet burdened, powerful yet trapped, productive yet exhausting. Their collective presence suggests strength, but also the relentless expectation that women exist as an always-ready force, mobilized to process whatever others refuse to handle.
The sculptural language develops through tensions: strength and fragility, metal forms that are permanent yet awkward, powerful yet absurd. Invisible labor appears not as celebration but as evidence—permanent traces of what is expected to remain unseen, metal monuments to the myth of infinite female competence.
By defining the structural supports, the armatures, the substrate itself, I am asking viewers to see the infrastructure of care work. The pieces function as both evidence and resistance, asking what happens when we refuse to let competence remain invisible, when we cast it in bronze and mount it where it cannot be ignored.
7. Process and Documentation
The project developed through iterative material experimentation across multiple phases:
Initial Series (September-November 2024):
Sculpted mushroom creature forms in black microcrystalline wax
Created portobello-style caps with dense gill structures
Added tripodal legs to emphasize the fantastical, deformed quality
Built tiny mushroom forms to explore varieties of caps, gills, stems
Attended bio-plastics workshop to investigate alternative materials
Experimented with plastilina clay for softer, more embryonic forms
Installed work in PE stairwell with LED lighting
3D Printing and Surface Treatment Experiments (November-December 2024):
Learned Prusa 3D printing software and explored open-source files
Multiple attempts to achieve correct scale and detail
Extensive surface preparation: sanding, joint compound application
Experimented with gold leaf using alcohol-based size
Tested automotive paint treatments and epoxy coating layers
Discovered limitations of synthetic materials for desired effect
Bronze Casting Development (December 2024-January 2025):
Transitioned from 3D printing to bronze casting for mushroom forms and branch segments
Created molds from found wood, oyster mushrooms, and hand-carved forms
Experimented with lost-wax and sand casting techniques
Developed attachment methods for securing bronze elements to wood substrate
Explored patina and oxidation treatments for surface variation
Substrate Study (Ongoing):
Foraging and preparing decomposing wood pieces from my home property
Collecting mosses, grasses, and organic materials for context
Documenting mushroom varieties in Mondim de Basto region
Building assemblages that combine found and cast elements
Technical Support:
Prof. Norberto Jorge: material exploration, technical approach
Tecnico Alcides Rodrigues: mould-making in silicone and plaster, lost-wax casting
Tecnico Tiago Cruz: wood, stone, metal equipment training and guidance, materials testing, workshop protocols
Tecnico Tiago Pinho: 3D printing in PLA and resin
Colega Isabel Neves: led the Fundição de Alumínio para Ateliê Artístico workshop during the fall semester where I was able to create my own sand cast moulds
Documentation Practice:
I maintain a digital log documenting:
Photographs of oyster mushroom growth patterns
Notes from mycological and feminist literature
Casting experiments and technical learning
Sketches and reflections on personal experiences of care work
The project functions as both evidence and resistance—permanent traces of what is expected to remain invisible, bronze monuments to the myth of infinite female competence.
8. Bibliography
Anderson, Laurie. "O Superman (For Massenet)." Big Science, Warner Bros. Records, 1982, digital audio.
Bourgeois, Louise. Untitled (with Growth). 1989. Robert Miller Gallery, New York.
Cage, John. John Cage: A Mycological Foray—Variations on Mushrooms. Edited by Pellerin, Ananda Atelier Éditions, 2020.
Cobbett, Amanda. Glaisdale bark samples x 3 - Xanthoria parietina, Auricularia auricula-judae, 2021.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press, 2012.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. Viking, 1989.
Höller, Carsten. Upside Down Mushroom Room. 2000. Installation. Fondazione Prada, Milan.
Hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. 3rd ed. Routledge, 1984.
Mosfegeh, Ottessa. My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Penguin Books, 2018.
Shoemaker, Sam.
Walker, Caroline.
9. Reference Authors
Alpizar, Hialda (dahlia3d). "Detailed Blue Oyster Mushroom." 3D Model. Sketchfab. https://www.printables.com/model/930589-detailed-blue-oyster-mushroom (Accessed November 12, 2024).
Borsato, Diane. Mushrooming: An Illustrated Guide to the Fantastic, Delicious, Deadly, and Strange World of Fungi. The Experiment, 2023.
Petersen, Jens H. The Kingdom of Fungi. Princeton University Press, 2012.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Perennial Classics, 1999.
Schwartzberg, Louie, director. Fantastic Fungi. i2i Productions, 2019. 1 hr., 21 min. https://fantasticfungi.com/pages/the-film.
Stamets, Paul. Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Ten Speed Press, 2005.