MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY LECTURE
I was invited to give a talk to students in the BA Drawing program at Middlesex University. The experience was deeply enriching — not only because it offered the opportunity to share my creative process with young artists at the beginning of their journeys, but also because of the genuine response that the work with mycelium inspired. I was surprised by the students’ curiosity and interest in a process that, at first glance, might seem unrelated to drawing, yet actually shares with it the same attention to observation, patience, and sensitivity toward material.
Beyond the attention the talk received, what was most valuable to me was the opportunity to teach and share knowledge. I discovered that transmitting a living experience has a transformative power — both for the listener and for the one who shares it. I understood that teaching — like art — is an act of care: it involves listening, accompanying, and creating the conditions for something to grow in another.
That experience made me recognize the affinity between the mycelial network and the human network that forms through teaching. Just as mycelium connects diverse organisms to sustain the life of a forest, the conversation with the students became a space of symbolic connection — a transfer of energy and thought that, though fleeting, may carry lasting resonance.
The value of that experience lay in realizing that I cannot control whether any of them will continue exploring work with fungi or living materials, but I can plant an idea: that art can be a practice of awareness, a more attentive way of relating to oneself and to the environment. I firmly believe that by awakening that awareness in others, one contributes — even on a small scale — to a collective change, just as a mycelial network transforms the soil it inhabits. In that sense, the talk at Middlesex was not merely a pedagogical activity, but a natural extension of the EN ÕVUM project — an exercise in connection, transmission, and shared growth.
Teaching became another way of making art: a living practice in which words temporarily replaced sculpture, yet preserved its essential purpose — to nurture empathy, reflection, and the possibility of a more conscious world through art.
