Interview Henrietta

The Normalville Contemporary Art Centre for Contemporary Art.
Henrietta Müller — They who are holding us together.

Henrietta Müller (1988) is a young Rotterdam-based artist from Transylvania (Romania). Her work can be described as intuitive and philosophic. Her work at the CACCA (haha) is a mixed media installation mostly made out of fungi. In one corner of the room we can find a kitchen overgrown by fungi, while in the center you find a big aquarium of water fungi. There is also a fungi tree. Using microscopes and microscopic camera’s connected to displays, the work shifts between extreme close-ups of the fungi to almost literally being overgrown by fungi yourself.

Henrietta plays with all your senses in this installation.

What about fungi interests you?

The intelligence of fungi interest me a lot. Fungi is one of the most intelligent being. It’s separate from the other eukaryotic life kingdoms of plants and animals. It’s a very primitive form. A characteristic that places fungi in a different kingdom from plants, bacteria, and some protists is chitin in their cell walls. Similar to animals, fungi are heterotrophs; they acquire their food by absorbing dissolved molecules, typically by secreting digestive enzymes into their environment. I’m very interested about their visual structure and smell and touch and taste.
Taste?

Yeah exactly.
And they also interest me because they are everywhere. Fungi are made up of tiny threads called mycelium. These travel underground, connecting the roots of different plants in an area, even different species, together, allowing them to communicate and so much more. Some researchers say the trees of the forest and the mushrooms we find growing next to them are so interconnected, that it is hard for them to see trees as individual entities any longer. Funghi are connected together in through the ground. They have a really good network. In that sense they are the first gossiping networkers, how cool is that.
A lot of people might think fungi (especially on food) might be disgusting. Is the disgust also something that’s interest you?

I like that they are gross but at the same time have this really beautiful structure, and its mysterious. You never know whether a certain kind of fungi, or mushroom, is good for you or not. It can be a platform that’s full of viruses and bad bacteria. But mostly I am interested in how they eat their environment and breaking it down / creating something new. Fungi are the principal decomposers in ecological systems. Fungi perform an essential role in the decomposition of organic matter and have fundamental roles in nutrient cycling and exchange in the environment. 

Would you describe this creation the main thematic in your work?

The thematics is the unpredictable existence. We don’t know why fungi become alive or how. Biologist obviously kind of know. But it’s the mystery behind it. And the randomness of creating something pretty. Seeing nature as an artist.

Can you elaborate on the title; They who are holding us together.

Yeah, if I’m thinking about atoms and about universe and about cosmos I am kind of sure that everything that’s holding us together is energy, or photons. And that basically is the only thing that fungus need. They can grow out of that and can hold our planet together. I see them almost as a layer, as a blanket. As a huge blanket.

Also I want to communicate through my work that after a while, everything that human creates can be basically taken over by nature. Also the human body relies so much on the fungi or how much we have. For me the fetish about it is almost the observation. I am observing this amount of fungi, but what if it’s turned around. Realising that it’s all connected make’s it this huge fungi that’s bigger than us, bigger than human life.

That’s also why I use microscopic camera’s. I want to play between this idea of mini and mega. For me it’s really interesting to play with these two perspectives. When you are small you are almost like the fungi yourself.

Does it have any relationship to the previous work you made?
 I have the view of creating as an art that’s common in my works. I use a really specific subject and I try to create something global out of it. Starting from a tiny focus point and expending it…

So where did your interest with fungi start? This photo happened in 2015, in my first house in Rotterdam. I left some feta cheese in the fridge. And this fungi became alive in the fridge after 4 weeks. The other one is my fascination with dried out fruits. One time I experimented with 4 apples I had them for 2,5 years. And the whole process how they dried out… How the fungi started to live from the apples.

What kind of experience do you want people to have within this exhibition? A little fungi experience. There is a little intention in me to show to people that fungi is beautiful, but also at the same time I want them to feel disgust by it. If they are scared, it’s also fine. It’s about the duality of it being disgusting and beautiful at the same time, and many more layers and networks.