'Playing with Trees'

For Meliantha Muliawan, material experimentation is an essential part of artistic practice. It is not only a way to explore new forms and possibilities, but also a means of understanding the materials themselves: how they are made, how they behave, and what happens to them after the process of creation. By examining the material consequences of her own practice, Meliantha brings environmental concerns into this work. She questions how artistic production can contribute to environmental problems through the accumulation of waste, the use of industrial materials produced at the expense of ecosystems, and disposable methods that neglect their long-term impact.

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In this work, Meliantha turns to mycelium as an alternative material, shaping its soft, organic structure into forms that resemble wood, a material commonly obtained through the exploitation of trees. By recreating the appearance of wood through a fundamentally different material, she draws attention to the limits of substitution and the assumption that natural resources can always be replaced. Her work suggests that not every resource is renewable at the pace of human consumption, and that the search for alternatives must go hand in hand with a reconsideration of overconsumption itself. This approach emerges from an awareness of the material and its inherent qualities, allowing the choice of medium to become an integral part of the work’s environmental critique.

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Her engagement with mycelium also transforms the process of making into an act of nurturing. Working with a living, growing material requires patience, care, and an openness to processes that cannot be entirely controlled. Rather than focusing solely on the finished object, Meliantha considers the conditions through which it comes into being. In this sense, nurturing becomes both a method of artistic production and a way of cultivating new possibilities for her practice, opening up relationships between art, material knowledge, and environmental responsibility.