We have inhabited this planet far longer than you. We allow you to see where we are - just look take a closer look at the ground. We prefer generating questions rather than serving as answers. It takes some imagination to understand our job in nature.

We're connected. Have you noticed? We boast the oldest and most efficient communication network; a natural internet that connects everything to everyone. We talk among ourselves. Even from miles away, we can sense what is happening, from one point to another.

Millions of years ago we began to cooperate and become symbiotic with living beings. We are an engine of evolution. Our spores are constantly dispersed through the air.

Inhale
Exhale
We're in your body right this moment.

We want your species to understand that nature is far more collaborative than competitive. You have neglected the Earth's limits and have fallen victim to a serious crisis of perception.

Reconnecting with the planet means survival. Survival is humanity's greatest challenge.

Your masters and philosophers argue that only love can know the truth. We are instruments of this love, of life, death, transformation, and the never-ending cycles of nature.

It is time to open your eyes and your mind. To feel. To act.

With a kingdom all of their own, fungi are a complex group of living organisms with distinct life strategies. Structurally, they are comprised of microscopic tubes called hyphae, which increase their surface area and volume, allowing a fungus to secrete enzymes and absorb nutrients. This gathering of hyphae forms the mycelium, a tangle of multidirectional threads that dwell beneath the ground and up to the earth's surface, and which are capable of extending for miles around. In certain fungi species, hyphae aggregate to form spores, which float through the air until landing miles away from their points of origin. If viable and the ideal conditions are found, these spores will then form new fungal colonies.

**Photo**: Spores and hyphae of the *Geastrum echinulatum fungus* under a scanning electron

When looking at a city, with its traffic lights working, its streets lit up, its shops and houses full of electronic equipment providing comfort and convenience, we seldom stop to consider the complex electrical network hidden beneath the ground or inside the walls, controlling all these functionalities. Similarly, when looking at a forest, we see the trees, flowers, animals, rivers, and humans that live there, but we ignore the networks of fungi that sustain the ecosystem by obtaining and distributing nutrients such as carbon.

The mycelial network works like this: interwoven threads determine a large part of the world's relationships. Billions of hyphae exploring a patch of forest, always looking for the shortest path towards nutrients, and serving as a communication network among plants. These networks influence the survival, growth, physiology, competitive abilities and behaviors of the plants and fungi involved.

Furthermore, there is scientific evidence that communication among fungi via mycelium contains electrical signals that, when encoded, is comparable to a language for exchanging information. As such, right underneath the ground is an extensive and complex network of connectivity that maintains the nutrient cycle and keeps the ecosystem healthy.

At the top:

The invisible life of fungi: The climate crisis has created an urgent need to find allies and reactivate our senses to create other ways of existing and inhabiting the world. What is called into question in this game is how we have related to humans and more than humans. The proposed experiment is aimed at fostering connections with fungi and with the way they produce their worlds through the alliances they form with those who inhabit and live together.

At the middle:

The pots are like small worlds with infinite possibilities for negotiation, some of which can be accompanied during the exhibition. The experiments propose to demonstrate this dynamic of encounters, the way these inhabitants intensify their existence. Hyphae, mycelia and mushrooms will tell the story of the invisible life of a fungus. (Fabíola Fonseca)

At the bottom:

Mushrooms are the "fruits" of fungi and have the mission to reproduce and maintain their species for generations. To do this, they release tons of spores per year - 400 million years of evolution have led to today's mushroom diversity. A mushroom blooms under an ideal combination of light, humidity, and temperature, which causes the machinery of the hyphae to alter behavior and form the structures we know. The action can be so powerful and intense that a mushroom can often break through even hard structures like concrete. Parodying Carlos Drummond de Andrade: It's ugly, but it's a mushroom. It pierced the asphalt, the boredom, the disgust and the hatred.

Inside the display case, a trunk with several specimens of the fungus known as "Tropical Cinnabar bracket".

“It is as if the stars are shining on the ground.”

This is one of the descriptions when walking through certain forests in Brazil at night, where bioluminescent fungi are present. Bioluminescent fungi glow as a result of a chemical reaction similar to that which occurs with fireflies and other organisms. It's caused by a substance called luciferin reacting with the enzyme luciferase in the presence of oxygen, which, in turn, generates the luminosity. Science already understands how the process occurs, and also knows that the phenomenon arose 160 million years ago in fungi, but there is still no idea as to why it happens. Nature is an never-ending event.

To learn more about bioluminescent fungi, scan the QR code alongside and access material on the subject prepared by scientists at Brazil's National Institute for Amazon Research.

**Photo:** Colony of fungi of the "Mycena cristinae" species, discovered in the Amazon by researchers from Brazil's National Institute for Amazonian Research (Inpa).
**Credit:** Oliveira et al. Mycoscience 2021

Fungi have several functions of importance in nature. They decompose plants and animals in their raw form; they can have a "give and take" relationship with plants by becoming host species, feeding on hormones and offering, in return, inputs for pest protection; but they can also be parasites, feeding on insects, slowly taking control of a species or even causing death (this sounds like something from a fictional TV show, doesn't it?).

The millions of tons of spores released into the atmosphere every year help form water in the clouds, able to cause the rains that cool forests and cities. However, all this may be in jeopardy. On a global scale, as with plants, the main drivers of fungal diversity loss include deforestation, agricultural expansion, urbanization and mining, and the impacts of the climate emergence, which cause major habitat fragmentation and loss.