by Margaret Sgarra, contemporary art curator
Cristina Barbieri is a visual artist born in Reggio Emilia, city where she graduated as a Master of Arts in the”Goldsmithing-Metals” section, and where she obtained a specialization in Marble Sculpture. Starting from 2022 she began to be interested in bioart and biodiversity. This passion led her to undertake an investigation towards mycology, which today is a central issue of her research and artistic poetic.
A fundamental aspect of your artistic research is represented by the relationship with matter, intended as a living organism to be taken care of. How did you come into contact with mycelium and what does it represent for you?
I am led to believe that spores of some mycorrhizal fungus, that is lives in symbiosis, have intercepted me and I have been chosen to test the potential of their species on humans. According to Richard Dawkins, a British biologist, essayist, science communicator and activist, genes do not only provide the instructions to build the body of an organism, but also certain behaviors through their own external expression commonly known as phenotype. A bird’s nest is therefore the phenotype of that bird, a beaver’s dam is the phenotype of that beaver. Following this reasoning in the same way my art, external expression of myself, is consequently the phenotype of a symbiotic relationship that I and that mushroom have developed together. I am sure that Terence McKenna would agree with me!
Interacting with such an unpredictable organism, how do you relate to artistic creation and the artwork that takes shape?
I use my senses to connect with them and, with ritual gestures performed with intention, I call them to reveal themselves to me by merging their subtle bodies with my movements, as in a dance whose choreography releases creative energy. In this magic, which is also an art, helps me to keep everything together. Learning a technique is one thing, being able to manage the material is another, mastering this type of element is something different again. Here we are talking about sensitive bodies and the right approach is needed. My work is the result of what is in all intents a true cooperation, never improvised, with a living organism. Sometimes I feel like I am not the master of what I create, but rather that I am dependent on someone or something that simply guides me. I have accepted the fact that there are no rules, that I cannot have control over them.
There is a performative dimension in your work. What do you think about this means of artistic expression and what importance does it have in your career?
It is an important part that represents the need to create a common thread between the life that moves hidden in the substratum of the earth like that of mushrooms, and the life that takes place on the surface like that of man. Through my body I propose a language that can put these two realities in communication and listen to the user.
When do you feel that a work of art or a performance has reached completion?
Never! I am the one who makes last minute adjustments, besides being eternally dissatisfied. Any work I do is never completely finished for me. In fact, it is like that.
Regarding the relationship with the public, what would you like to communicate through your works?
Nature is able to inspire our lifestyle, especially cerebrally. Since I began studying, learning and working with organic material, I started to no longer feel lonely, not alone in the world. On the contrary, I understood that everything is truly connected to the other. Above all, that true inclusion lies precisely in the ability to recognize and accept diversity. This is what I would like to be able to teach and transmit, rather than communicate. Furthermore, as a future mycologist, I would like to give mycology the opportunity to not be seen only as a science to be studied in the laboratory in a schematic and analytical way, without diminishing its importance in any way. Instead, I would like to try to raise it to a level in which science, man and art can merge, giving rise to something eternal and immortal: energy.
Who are your reference artists and why?
Nature is always my inspiration, but I also draw a lot from Greek art and Shamanic culture. If instead we talk about contemporary art, one above all has my total admiration, and he is the one who helped me go deep into my essence, to discover how to reach that light, that perpetual illumination, the one who taught me to see in the dark: Alberto Burri.