To Move Like Fungi
Meet the Fellows
Anindya Gupta is an interdisciplinary artist working across theatre, design, and visual storytelling. With a background in biotechnology and deep ties to wilderness, her work explores nature’s structures through abstraction, minimalism, and ecological interconnectedness.
Angelina Kumar is a socially engaged artist and researcher based in the Netherlands. Her work explores ecological issues, local contexts, and the commons through collaborative, research-based, and playful artistic interventions that foster healthier ecosystems.
Jasan is a Garo installation artist, creative coder, and interactive designer. He blends generative art and oral traditions to explore technology's role in storytelling. With roots in Tura, India, he bridges contemporary and ancestral design practices.
Rasagy Sharma is an information designer and data artist who leads design at CapitalOne’s DataLabs. He creates identity-based data art, teaches at IIT Bombay and NID, and supports creative coding communities in India and beyond.
Sambita is a behavioural ecologist and visual artist working at the intersection of science, art, and conservation. Her nonverbal, data-informed practice includes conservation board games and interactive art on human-primate relations, rooted in bioacoustics and AI safety.
The Spark
Invisible Caregivers: Nurturing from the Shadows
In a world that grows ever faster, louder, and more fragmented under the weight of globalisation, To Move Like Fungi is an idea of care, community building and slowing down in shared spaces, embodying the mycelial filaments that weave below our feet, unseen yet essential—a care network nurturing in secrecy. Fungi are not just the mushrooms we see above ground, but vast, invisible networks that sustain life through connection and exchange. Much like human systems of solidarity—mutual aid, intergenerational support, quiet activism—mycelium demonstrates that true care often happens behind the scenes, beyond accolades, carried by relationships rather than structures alone. Its transformative power reminds us that what appears as decay to an unwitting eye is in fact renewal—the quiet labor through which ecosystems continue the cycle of life.
Photo courtesy: Angelina, Ryan, Sambita, Anindya
From the Field
To Move Like Fungi has always been rooted in the spirit of collaboration, reciprocity, and shared curiosity. Much like a mycelial network nourishes and connects life beneath the surface, this project grew through relationships and exchanges that shaped its journey. Artist, mushroom grower, and collector, Biplab Mahato of Shroomin’, invited us into his world, sharing his mushroom collections, introducing us to their diverse properties, recounting folk tales from his field explorations, and even offering the delicacy of mushroom pickle. He also gifted us beautifully illustrated knowledge cards designed to spark fungal wonder in children, enriching the project’s educational reach.
Prithvi from the Fungi Foundation extended this network further, offering The Mushroom Keepers—a documentary by Naveed Mulki on Indigenous knowledge of mushrooms in Meghalaya—for inclusion in the exhibition. Even the everyday act of walking through the city became part of the narrative, revealing unexpected fungal encounters tucked into Bengaluru’s urban landscape.
These shared offerings of knowledge, stories, and tangible gifts mirrored the mycelium’s own quiet but vital work: building community below the surface and weaving many lives into one living whole.
Invisible Mechanics
Beneath the visible layers of the exhibition lay an intricate network of tools, techniques, and skills woven together, mirroring the hidden mechanics of a fungal system. At its core, we had a sensor-driven projection sprawled across the floor, responding to the movements of the audience, while an audio guide deepened the embodied experience. Around them, we imagined faintly musty sculptural mushrooms constructed from mycelium would transform the space into a multisensory environment reaching beyond the audiovisual, inviting touch, smell, presence, and wonder.
This interactive core extended beyond the physical space into the realm of ideas. Visitors were invited to inscribe their experiences of kindness onto hyphae-like cloth strands wrapped around tree branches, breathing life into the growing network as these threads spread and multiplied with each shared story. Additionally, a participatory illustrated zine, enriched with creative coding, playful games, and digital art, carried the conversation further, transforming complex fungal ecologies into accessible, engaging narratives.
Each element, whether technical, artistic, or conceptual, was interlaced, much like hyphae weaving through soil, forming a living ecosystem of engagement. Together, they invited audiences not merely to learn about fungi, but to move like them: interconnected, responsive, and alive.
Tinkering & Trials
Like any living organism, the exhibition evolved through experimentation, improvisation, and iterative growth. Early efforts during the residency saw lights and mesh materials being tested to complement the sculptural pieces, shaping the tactile & visual environment. At the second iteration, strands of cloth, where visitors had inscribed their acts of kindness, were suspended around the central installation, evoking the branching hyphae of a fungal network. The audio journey, initially meditative and contemplative at the Goethe-Institut, transformed into a more cinematic narrative at Bangalore Creative Circus, offering a fresh layer of immersion. Technical challenges also became opportunities for adaptation. The original plan to use LiDAR sensors gave way to Kinect technology, and the projection system came to life through the generous . These behind-the-scenes trials were as crucial as the final form, reminding us that, like fungi themselves, creative work thrives on adaptation, collaboration, and continuous transformation.
Stories along the Way
The exhibit transformed into a space of exchange of laughter, reflection, and the small, tender stories that knit communities together. Visitors shared tales of foraging, memories of childhood encounters with mushrooms, and personal acts of kindness that surfaced slowly, like fungi after rain. One participant noted that it took time to recall a single act of care, but once they did, the words followed effortlessly, growing and branching like mycelium itself. The space encouraged curiosity beyond the current trendiness of mushrooms, grounding the dialogue in lived experience and ecological connection. Importantly, the project also sought to support Indigenous knowledge-holders in non-extractive ways, honouring their wisdom and ways of knowing without appropriation. In this web of shared stories and small gestures, To Move Like Fungi became more than an exhibit. It became a living organism of relationships, constantly growing through generosity, attention, and care.
The First Prototype
Our exhibit at Goethe-Institut Bengaluru opened with The Mushroom Keepers (2024), a documentary by the Fungi Foundation directed by Naveed Mulki. Through this cinematic entry point, To Move Like Fungi invited audiences to root themselves in the wisdom of the Khasi tribe of Meghalaya—their rituals, stories, and ways of dwelling with mushrooms and fungi. From there, the experience unfolded into an embodied, multisensory journey: guided by sound, visitors stepped into a projected mycelial network that unfurled in response to their slowing down, their stillness nourishing its luminous growth. Acts of care were inscribed onto strips of cloth and woven into a visible web of human connection, while the audience was invited to engage with the musty mycelial mushroom sculptures surrounding the space as portals of transport and immersion into the fungal realm.
Alongside, a participatory zine opened pathways into the hidden architectures of fungal life. What lies unseen beneath the fruiting bodies we know as mushrooms came alive as participants’ traced out the mycelial networks in a maze game, while a “Did You Know?” constellation bloomed from curious facts and peculiar stories exchanged across a communal table where threads of conversation interlaced into a living, breathing network of shared knowledge.
A second iteration of the prototype at Bangalore Creative Circus invited the audience to take home a personalized zine, its background generated on the spot through interactive technology.The exhibit, like the fungi it celebrated, became a terrain where care, kinship, and curiosity converged into an experience that is both quiet and expansive, delicate and enduring.