This lecture has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. 

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This lecture develops the concept of fungal flesh as a critical response to colonial-capitalist regimes that fracture embodied relationality—splitting spirit from flesh, mind from body, and humans from nature. Drawing on Latinx and Black feminist theorizations of the flesh, and attuned to the plantation paradigm that undergirds both colonial histories and contemporary ecological crises, I ask how we might reimagine kinship and care through the lens of fungal metabolisms that interweave human and more-than-human life in cycles of regeneration.

Building on Mexica cosmologies of nanácatl (“flesh,” sacred mushrooms), fungal flesh highlights affective correspondences among human and more-than-human beings: hyphal-carnal ties of protection and reciprocity that emerge not as prescribed ethics but as visceral-material impulses to care, to safeguard the conditions that sustain metabolic flourishing. Like fungi that weave connections to circulate nutrients and information through forest soils—and that also transform decay into fertile ground—fungal feminisms propose that flesh itself—fleshy, earthy, and spiritual—can become a connective, generative ground for ecological and social regeneration.

About the Artist:

Xalli Zúñiga is a visual artist, educator, and researcher based in Mexico. Their transdisciplinary work weaves together critical ecological justice, decolonial feminist theory, and socially engaged art, particularly through collaborations with Indigenous mushroom foragers, environmental defenders, and LGBTQ+ communities in central Mexico. Zúñiga coined the term ‘fungal feminisms’ to describe a framework grounded in the metabolic, regenerative, and relational capacities of fungi as a means to reimagine social reproduction beyond extractivist and anthropocentric paradigms. Trained as both an artist and critical theorist, Zúñiga holds a dual Ph.D. in Art Education and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from The Pennsylvania State University, with previous studies at UNAM and in Europe.