THE SACRED SPORE - POST-ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT
A Ritual of Ecological Surrender.
In a Post-Anthropocene future - where human systems have collapsed and death exists at an overwhelming scale - the question is no longer how we mourn, but what happens to our bodies when we're gone.
Across many cultures, the dead are preserved, embalmed, buried, or cremated. These practices keep the body intact for longer, delaying its return to the earth. In a world without caretakers, bodies would accumulate - remaining on the surface, unable to decompose quickly enough, and creating new pressures on the landscape.
The Sacred Spore proposes a cultural correction: a chosen acceleration of decay, and a ritualised return.
The piece is imagined not as a human invention, but as something commissioned by fungi - the earth's primary recyclers, operating beyond human timescales. Here, they are understood as a distributed, god-like force: not a single entity, but a system that persists through continual breakdown and regeneration.
The ritual begins before birth. During pregnancy, an offshoot is cultivated from the mother's Sacred Spore - a continuation of her fungal lineage. At birth, this is combined with spores selected by a second parent or community member, gathered from the local environment. Together, they form a composite strain: inherited and situated.
This cultivated spore is encased within a wearable object and placed against the infant's body, resting near the navel. Its form references the womb - a site of origin and return. Within it, dormant spores are held in small ovarian structures, carrying the potential for future growth.
It is worn throughout life. It grows slowly with the body, becoming skin-like. As people move and form new communities, these spores travel with them - enabling different strains to disperse and re-establish across the world after death. Human movement becomes a vector for biodiversity.
After death, the process begins. As the body cools and breaks down, shifts in chemistry activate the spores. The fungi break from their ovarian structures, emerging into the surrounding flesh, accelerating decomposition and returning the body to the soil.
For a brief period, small mushrooms appear at the surface of the body - a quiet, ceremonial gesture - before collapsing back into the ground. Each body becomes a site of release. A transfer. A continuation.
Etched onto the surface is a statement of intent: Do not resuscitate. Do not preserve. Allow me to return.
Wearing The Sacred Spore is an agreement made at birth and carried through life - an offering to the soil, an act of humility and reciprocity, and a relinquishing of control over what comes after.
In life, the piece is a reminder of that promise. In death, it fulfils it.
The Sacred Spore transforms jewellery into a vessel of ecological devotion - a ritual of surrender to the cycles of decay and renewal. It asks not how we might live forever, but how we return.
I'm interested in pushing jewellery beyond ornament into something that holds responsibility. This piece still functions as jewellery - it's worn on the body, carries identity and lineage - but it also acts as a contract with the earth.