Irina Zadov: Beyond Our Brief Existence

I’m starting a portrait series inspired by Grace Lee Bogg’s persistent question: “what time is it on the clock of the world?” I’m inviting people I love and admire to sit for a live (virtual) portrait and reflect on this question together. My intention is to practice deep listening, presence, and interconnectedness. Remembering to slow down, process, and praxis.

I decided it’s only fair that I paint myself first. I’m a little rusty with portraiture. Those of you who knew me in high school probably remember this was my first artistic love. It feels good to come back to it after 20 years.

The background of this painting is Basidiomycota, a fungi I noticed growing in the forrest, while on residency in Hungary. It feeds off living trees and continues to live on them after they die of natural causes or deforestation. It’s a parasite which is an interesting metaphor for this time. What systems continue to profit off sickness and death? Which structures and institutions are dying? What realities are being cut off and which ones are being birthed? How do we transform suffering, sickness, and injustice into mutual aid, redistribution, and interdependence?

How can we learn from the Basidiomycota to live after death? To radically imagine a word beyond the collapse of capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy?

How can we be like fungi and continue to build communities of care that expand wider and more expansively: beyond ourselves, our families, our friends, our neighbors, beyond our borders, beyond our species, beyond our brief existence on this plane?