Project Mycelium
A project in progress by Bianca Nikolareizi & Robert Bryant
A multimedia exhibition with biological sculptures.
Dates: Thursday 27, Friday 28 & Saturday 29 March 2025, 11:00 am–6:00 pm
Performances: Saturday 29 March, 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm, by Aliki Germanou
Venue: Agricultural Museum of the Agricultural University of Athens, Iera Odos 75, Athens.
On 27, 28 and 29 March 2025, the first public presentation of Project Mycelium, an ongoing project by Bianca Nikolareizi and Robert Bryant, took place at the Agricultural Museum of the Agricultural University of Athens. It brought Art, Science and History together in a multimedia exhibition of biological sculptures and performances. Costumes associated with major figures of modern Greek history — Ioannis Kapodistrias, Queen Amalia and Maria Callas — were transformed into dynamic landscapes in which new life could develop.
The exhibition space evoked a crypt or repository of artefacts, populated by a series of human figures. Some wore exact replicas of garments associated with prominent figures in recent Greek political and cultural history; others wore original fashion creations. The costumes were not intact: each had been colonised by one or more species of living fungi, whose mycelium spread through the fabric, consuming and transforming it. The fungal cultures were prepared so that their fruiting bodies would emerge during the exhibition. The biological sculptures changed from day to day as the mushrooms grew towards maturity, making the presentation possible for only three days. Screens and projection mapping interspersed the installation with fragments of the cultivation process, time-lapse footage, microphotographs and related artworks.
On Saturday 29 March, at 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm, performer Aliki Germanou presented a choreography in the exhibition space: a female “hieromnemon” — in the Byzantine sense of a guardian of sacred objects and archives — an enigmatic creature wandering among biological sculptures and images.
“Since, traditionally, the hieromnemones were men who preserved institutional memory, I looked for a different way of performing within the space,” says Aliki Germanou. “I created a ritual in which, through movement and dance, I interacted with the exhibits, functioning as a living conduit of memory — not archival, but more organic. A memory circulating invisibly, like the underground networks of fungi, connected to the endless cycles of life: sowing, birth, decay, ending and rebirth.”
The project was developed in collaboration with the Laboratory of General and Agricultural Microbiology of the Agricultural University of Athens, under the supervision of Professor Georgios Zervakis and Assistant Professor Georgios Koutrotsios, who provided scientific advice and coordinated the experiments conducted in the laboratory.
The project’s documentation — including filming and time-lapse recordings of fungal growth, microphotographs, visual fragments and projection mapping — was supervised by film director Akrivi Kollia.
Bianca Nikolareizi and Robert Bryant undertook this lengthy and complex process after studying literature on fungal growth and its applications, including work by Bryce Kendrick and John Deighton, and drawing inspiration from contemporary thinkers and anthropologists such as Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing and Eduardo Kohn.
The artists were interested in fungi as organisms that appear, among other places, in degraded ecosystems and abandoned or environmentally burdened areas. While some species are harmful to humans, many play a decisive role in food and drink production, pharmaceuticals, the development of new materials, and the management of agricultural residues and industrial waste. In this project, the artists focused particularly on memory: its erosion, distortion and, at times, its liberating disappearance. Their work seeks to highlight the many connections between artistic expression, science, technology, social issues and ecology.
Project credits
Concept, artistic direction & curation: Bianca Nikolareizi & Robert Bryant
Scientific collaboration: Laboratory of General & Agricultural Microbiology, Agricultural University of Athens — Professor Georgios Zervakis, Assistant Professor Georgios Koutrotsios, PhD candidate Savvas Christodoulou
Exhibition venue: Agricultural Museum “Leonidas Louloudis”, Agricultural University of Athens, with the support of Museum Director Professor Stavros Zografakis and Communications Manager Evridiki Spyropoulou
Performance: Aliki Germanou
Cinematography & documentation: Akrivi Kollia; Dimitris Kosikidis (time-lapse photography and technical management); Nikos M. Dalezios (projection mapping and editing)
Soundscape: Robert Bryant, Dimitris Kosikidis
Costume design: Bianca Nikolareizi
Metal sculpture construction: Stelios Gkikas
Costume construction: Agni Lavida
Project advisor: Alexandros J. Stanas
