Arbuscule

The arbuscules found their way into April Kam’s practice after a dream of her grandmother. She paints with bubbles, forming the membranes of the root cells. The fineliner follows, pushing through the passages the bubbles have built, and the hyphae grow outside and into them.

The tiny trees sit inside the cells. The hands reach outward. Kam thinks of her ancestors, all the time sending signals in, reaching out, disappearing, forming again…

Knowledge and habits from her grandmother pass involuntarily to her and to her offspring. There is no escaping the lineage. 祖先業力. Or is it so? The root has some say in what it lets in, and in what it lets go. She would love to believe it is the same for her.