Marina Leonteva

Sympathy for Fungi
2025, Pastel on paper, 20×28.5 cm

In this work, I was trying to feel the border between life and death — not as an idea, but as a texture. Painting with pastels allows me to explore dry, tactile and intimate nature of fungal sexuality and its attraction to the dead. Dead plants, fallen leaves, manure — they carry a strange beauty. Decay, as an attribute, and glowing rhizomes as a sex-symbol of mushrooms sexuality. That is where I escape — into their slow, wordless world, imagining a calendar with “photos” of hot images from their reality. This work became the first in a series exploring the fungal perception of vitality, intertwined with death.