©2022 Christiane Fashek

Curious Allies: Mutualism in Fungi, Parasites and Carnivores, is now on view at Tucson Botanical Gardens, Tucson, AZ through June 30, 2025. It will then travel to the Bell Museum in St. Paul, MN, opening there on September 27, 2025. Unusual plants with fascinating relationships have been chosen for this Fifth Triennial by a jury team of Joanna Groarke, Robin Jess, Patricia Jonas, and Susan Mintun. Juried in are 48 artworks from artists in the US, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, South Africa, and the UK. The artworks included illustrate various elements of the theme, examining important and often unobserved relationships fungi, lichens, mycotrophic, parasitic, and carnivorous plants have with other plants and animals. Mushrooms and fungi serve as decomposers, form networks between plants, and can clean up environmental toxins. Lichens are themselves relationships between fungi and a chlorophyll-containing bacteria or algae. Parasitic plants attach directly to a host and draw nutrients from the host, sometimes harming the host. And carnivorous plants supplement nutrients from soil and water with a diet of insects, digesting them for additional nutrients. Some of these are among the most common on earth, such as lichens, and others are incredibly rare, found in only a handful of places. All are organisms that rely on ingenious methods of collaboration to survive and serve as examples of some of the connections that bind all life together. 

Artists with work included are: Susan Benjamin, Margaret Best, Jessica Daigle, Rebecca Davies, Maria Alice deRezende, Ronda Dick, Shevaun Doherty, Jean Emmons, Akiko Enokido, Christiane Fashek, Lara Gastinger, Janet Goltz, Prerna Gupta, Yoko Harada, Erika Hargesheimer, Albina P. Herron, Asuka Hishiki, Ann Hoffenberg, Mariko Ikeda, Mieko Ishikawa, Karen Kluglein, Patricia Luppino, Lucy Martin, Tammy S. McEntee, Sarah Morrish, Eunike Nugroho, Barbara Oozeerally, Nina Petrochko, Sengmany Phommachakr, Linda Powers, Theresa Ream, Gillian Rice, Betsy Rogers-Knox, Daleen Roodt, Elaine Searle, Beverly Simone, Kim Spink, Jane Sturgeon, Rose Torres, Donnett Vanek, Janene Walkky, Yuan Yuan Wang, Carol Woodin, and Fatima Zagonel.


ASBA gratefully acknowledges these Exhibition Sponsors, who generously provided major support for Curious Allies: Mutualism in Fungi, Parasites, and Carnivores

Chris J. Haas

Catherine M. Watters

For info on travel: exhibitions@asba-art.org.

To support this exhibition’s travel: Sponsorships