ART4 | [Cultural Event] Floating Life – a creative artwork inspired by aquatic fungi
[Cultural Event] Floating Life – a creative artwork inspired by aquatic fungi
Convener: Pietro Marchese | Co-conveners: Sara Manfio, Francesco Marcello Falcieri, Gabriella Traviglia, Laura Garzoli
Fungi populating aquatic environments are amongst the lesser known organisms of such ecosystems. Without being seen by the naked eye, they contribute to aquatic microbial communities within glacial meltwater, freshwater basins and oceans, at the global level. Ranging a large biological and functional diversity, aquatic fungi demand for global acknowledgement by the scientific as well as the non-scientific communities.

The exhibited artwork seeks to represent the extraordinary biodiversity of aquatic fungi by depicting some of their floating life forms as well as colours that represent their preparation for micro-imaging. Moreover, the combination of creative work with living fungi that are visible in their macroscopic form establish a contemporary vision between the macroscopic and microscopic.

Floating Life emanates from the exchange between aquatic mycologists and the young artist Sara Manfio, currently a student at the Venice Academy of fine arts, and was established within the framework of the interdisciplinary project Art of Marine Sciences (ARSMar). It was exposed in Venice at the exposition “Bio≠ Biodiversity as Essential Coexistence”, and it is now further contributing to the acknowledgement of aquatic fungi as an essential component of the global biome.