Video
A+RC Public Lecture by Joshua Shannon
Watch a replay of our Art + Research Center Summer 2025 Symposium lecture by Joshua Shannon: Trees and Fungus, or Living Relationally: The Art of Wangechi Mutu
This talk considers contemporary art’s preoccupation with trees and fungus, focusing on works in which the human-nonhuman relationship is defined by dialogue and exchange. The talk focuses especially on what we can learn from the recent collages and sculptures of the Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, which depict creatures who are at once human and nonhuman, natural and artificial, male and female, and beyond racial categorization.