“In the ruins of capitalism, there is value to be found not in accumulation but in the collaborative survival of species in fragile ecosystems.” —Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World

 

Mushrooms, growing from the ruins, either natural or industrial.

Margins of threads, cut by machines, are the ruins of weaving lives. Gondola, a necessity in a city built on water—a single circulation element that connects and retreats.

Mushrooms, Threads, and Gondola explores the possibilities of regeneration and interdependence amidst the precarity of contemporary life. Through Wang Huan’s layered works, the exhibition pokes into the transformative potential of discarded materials—reimagined as vessels of resilience and renewal, reacting to the ruins: the byproducts of development, erosion, and neglect.

 

Now situated in St Leonards-on-Sea, a town shaped by retreating tides and shifting industries, the exhibition listens closely to the rhythms of a different edge. Here, the remains are not buried beneath concrete but scattered along the coast—washed ashore, half-remembered. Like foam upon its waves, Huan’s works speak to the afterlives of use, the quiet insistence of return.

 

Echoes, extensions, and shadows flicker through the rhythm of the space, light coming in from the seaside windows. Sculptures drift like boats, just like mushrooms push through imagined cracks in the shore, threads pull toward the edge.

 

We are both back from the edges of lands; we are sewn into the webs.

We invite you to step into the river – once and for all.

We are not seeing the mushrooms, but beneath the cement surface, entangled in the bricks and salt, prospering amid disruption.