The Meaning of Collaboration Between Humans and Other Species
**Mutual Aid: Art in Collaboration with Nature – A Look at Interspecies Co-Creation**
*TURIN, Italy* — In a time where ecological consciousness is at the forefront of artistic and cultural discourse, the exhibition *Mutual Aid: Art in Collaboration with Nature* at Castello di Rivoli sheds light on the essential, albeit complex, relationship between humans and the natural world. Curated by Francesco Manacorda and Marianna Vecellio, this exhibition presents a radical rethinking of artistic authorship, highlighting the ways artists have been working *with* nature rather than merely depicting or manipulating it.
Drawing inspiration from the Russian anarchist and naturalist Piotr Kropotkin’s 1902 treatise *Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution*, the exhibition questions the long-held notion of Darwinian competition as the primary force of survival. Instead, Kropotkin suggested that cooperation is not only present in nature, but essential for survival. This concept serves as a foundation for *Mutual Aid*, where more than 20 artists, alongside their nonhuman collaborators, showcase the potential of symbiotic creation.
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### **Artworks Shaped by Nature**
A key highlight of the exhibition is *Vivian Suter’s* large-scale canvases. Instead of finishing her paintings in a traditional studio setting, the Argentina-born artist allows natural elements to intervene. Installed as suspended, frameless compositions, her painted surfaces have been exposed to rain, mud, and even the paws of animals in the Guatemalan jungle where she works. This surrender of sole authorship blurs the boundaries between human intention and environmental influence, welcoming chance and nature’s touch.
Accompanying Suter’s pieces is *Giuseppe Penone’s* radical sculpture, where he cast his own hand in bronze and embedded it into a living tree. Over the decades, the tree continued to develop around the cast, responding to the intervention in its way. Titled “*It Will Continue to Grow Except at That Point*” (1968–2003), the work highlights a fundamental truth about human-nature interaction: even when we attempt to modify the natural world, it persists in shaping itself.
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### **Interspecies Collaborations and Environmental Art**
The exhibition further explores how nonhuman organisms—whether insects, plants, fungi, or marine life—can actively contribute to artistic creation. *Hubert Duprat’s* work with caddisfly larvae is a remarkable example. In the wild, these tiny aquatic creatures construct protective tubes using available materials such as wood, sand, or pebbles. Duprat intervenes by providing minuscule pieces of gold and precious stones, leading the insects to create organic jewelry-like cases.
*Tomás Saraceno*, an artist famous for his work with spiderwebs, brings his longstanding fascination with arachnid architecture to the exhibition. His delicate, powder-coated webs turn the labor of spiders into intricate sculptural works, existing as both biological phenomena and aesthetic objects.
Meanwhile, *Renato Leotta* introduces an innovative approach to photography by enabling plankton to create their own self-portraits. Using photosensitive paper submerged in ocean water, he captures the ghostly trails left behind by microscopic life forms, presenting an ephemeral documentation of their movement.
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### **Blurring Boundaries Between Art and Ecology**
Moving beyond static artworks, *Michel Blazy’s* *Le lâcher d’escargots* (2009) takes an even more dynamic approach. This piece invites snails to crawl across a textured surface, leaving behind slow-moving, curvaceous slime trails on the wall and floor, forming an organic, ever-changing drawing.
Similarly, *Aki Inomata’s* *How to Carve a Sculpture* (2018–ongoing) presents a compelling dialogue between humans and Eurasian beavers. By enlarging and replicating the bite marks of these water mammals, Inomata reflects on the similarities between natural instincts and human sculptural techniques. The result is a striking connection between biology and artistic expression, demonstrating how animals shape materials in ways that align with deeply rooted artistic traditions.
The exhibition concludes with *Precious Okomoyon’s* ambitious environmental installation *The Sun Eats Her Children* (2023), a tropical greenhouse filled with invasive and poisonous plants. Inside this hot and humid space, black butterflies flutter through the air, landing intermittently on the flora. The piece serves as a metaphor for the complex and often contradictory relationship between human intervention, ecosystem disruption, and adaptation.
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### **Are These True Collaborations?**
Despite the show’s fascinating premise, it raises critical questions about the authenticity of mutual aid between humans and nonhuman species. Many of the works rely heavily on human intervention—whether through guiding natural processes or utilizing living organisms as materials for artistic expression. While these collaborations