In our cryptic encounter,
I’ll surrender to the spell of dreams
and swim the tumultuous currents
of our symbiotic metamorphosis.


Without apparent notice,
we’ll crack the shell,
learn to affect each other,
soaking up past life tears.


Will you fragment me until I disappear?
Or instead, strain me to the point
where I am yet able to return,
shedding, glowing under a new skin?


Will you attempt to disguise
and impose, in fear, your truth as mine?
Or tenderly hold our opacities,
daring to love what you do not see?


For I am not the absolute but a multiplicity
dressed in layers of transparencies,
a parasite that struggles to belong
nowhere and everywhere, arriving here,
a world that once was, and now fades into another.


– Haustorium

The haustorium is the organ through which parasitic plants or fungi attach to the stems or roots of the host, forming a functional bridge that invades the host tissue to uptake water and nutrients. The etymology of the name (plural haustoria) corresponds to the Latin word haustor meaning ‘the one who draws, drains or drinks’.

I wanted to create something in collaboration with the space; something that I could not create by myself and over which, to a certain extent, I could not have control; a parasite that, like us, would have to learn to be affected and accept its metamorphosis (or its dissolution) within a relationship and friction with other beings. I also wanted to work and experiment with paper because it is a material I am very familiar with in my practice and because it is very fragile and easy to manipulate, but at the same time has an extraordinary capacity for resilience and transformation. Its shape was inspired by the algae found all over Floating University, the Hydrodictyon Reticulatum, commonly known as the Water Net.