Asked how the artist manages the growth and maintenance of mold in her work to achieve the desired effects, Dasha said: “It’s mostly time, my super attention, daily checkups, and complete trust in nature plus my skill, interest, passion, love, and belief.”
We were wondering what types of mold Plesen works with and their unique characteristics. We found out: “I do not categorize them because I’m interested in their visual appearance, colors, the way they communicate, develop, disappear, so for me, it’s a parallel to relations with people. I do not care about species aspects, like skin tone, race, weight, height, hair color, eye color – I’m interested in the full, I accept and I love, no matter what. Unique characteristics are the way they gently touch each other when they grow, how they transport the color inside the body, and how they develop in time. Also, the imagery is very new every time and it stimulates my dopamine system extremely hard. Also, an interesting moment is pareidolia, when I see faces, letters, manuscripts, and codes inside the petri dish. One day I want to make my own alphabet with decrypted symbols!
But, of course, when it comes to special projects where we need to cultivate only one type – I should know the name and morphology 100 percent.”
