MY MOTHER'S COUNTRY | Ofer Grunwald — LIVE: Global Community Bio Summit

MY MOTHER’S COUNTRY | A Dynamic Exhibition Using Mycelium

by Ofer Grunwald

The exhibition My Mother’s Country explores the transformation of ancestral experiences into identity myths, and the inability to maintain these myths once they re-take physical form.

Inspired by contemporary Aboriginal paintings, My Mothers’ Country relates the myths of my own ancestral lands – from the streets of Frankfurt, to the fields of Israel. The exhibition follows these myths through three generations of my family, with the works progressively zooming-in and becoming more specific and realistic.

Of particular interest here are the two series My Mother’s Country and Parents’ Journey, which respectively comprise large-scale dot paintings and etched prints, rendered in mycelium on an acrylic glass base. The fungal medium makes these works living, dynamic objects. These objects explore the real-world locations and experiences of my family’s previous generations, which have passed into myth.

The exhibition is based on a year’s research and development carried out in collaboration with Prof. Nir Osherov’s mycology lab in Tel Aviv University, Israel, and with ReaGent’s facilities in Gent, Belgium. Our work has yielded a consistently reliable method of creating large-scale art works, which remain dynamic and ever-changing during the exhibition. The ability to place the dynamic process itself, on all its complexity, into a gallery or museum context allows for the creation of infinitely nuanced artwork, which is both engaging and communicative, while remaining ineffable and contemplative.

Ofer Grunwald

Ofer Grunwald is a multidisciplinary artist working in mixed-media installation and figurative sculpture. His work is informed by his practice in bonsai, and driven by a fascination with processes and the tension between the dynamic and the seemingly static.

Ofer’s installation pieces emanate from various traditions - cultural, religious, artistic - that have served as a formative backdrop for him, and his work tends to turn a critical, but ultimately compassionate eye on these. By rendering them contemporary and dynamic, Ofer highlights the dissonance between tradition as a static object, and the dynamics of the society that practices that tradition.