‘Dead Gods’ is a living monument that honors the prehistoric mushrooms that are the origin of life on earth as sacred ancestral deities.

Jemila MacEwan is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in New York. MacEwan was born in Scotland to Sufi parents and immigrated to Australia as a child where her upbringing intertwined scientific, mythological and spiritual ways of learning from the land. She continues to draw connections between people and place; material and culture; spirituality and experience. MacEwan is known for her intimately interwoven earthworks, sculptures and performances that build mythological narratives around meteorites, volcanoes, fault-lines and melting glaciers. These stories engage with the emotional complexity of humanity’s destructive impact to the planet and to life itself as a way to understand what it means to be human within the Holocene extinction. For us to meet the challenges brought on by a world in change, MacEwan asserts we must unravel the layers of denial that separate humans from the natural environment and recognize nature as a diverse network of powerful and animated forces deserving our attention, trust and respect.

‘Dead Gods’ will pay tribute to a specific prehistoric mushroom called the Prototaxite. Prototaxites lived 416 million years ago and were, at that time, the largest living organisms on the planet. These totem-like giants – known to have grown 30 feet tall – dominated the Sirulian landscape. This work ennobles Prototaxites, deifying them as creators of life on earth and interpreting the natural history of our planet as a cosmology. Upholding the importance of cosmologies, origin stories and mythologies is crucial to our sense of connection between cultural histories and the natural history of the universe. By recognizing the power of honoring ancestors as a grounding perspective, we are taking responsibility for the preservation of life as part of an ongoing lineage.

These mycelium monoliths will be grown from a modern-day ancestor of the ancient fungi giants, holding space for contemplation of the perseverance of life through repeated events of mass-extinction. To meet the challenges of the Holocene Extinction, we need to extend our imagination of ancestry beyond the human narrative and recognize our place as co-collaborators in the story of life on earth. ‘Dead Gods’ is accountable to the psychological pressure of trying to reach into the past to gain control of a future fraught with uncertainty.

MacEwan will be growing the ‘Dead Gods’ this summer at Sculpture Space residency. The work will be on view at Governors’ Island this coming September to October.

Please visit Jemila’s Instagram and her website for more information.