“The Czech Are Excellent Mushroom Hunters:” The Visual Politics of Fungi in (Post)Socialism

Mushroom foraging is a passion shared nationwide across all demographic and social groups of Czech society: over 70% of the population visit forests for mushroom foraging at least once a year, gathering almost 11kg of mushrooms per household. The paper explores how mushroom foraging as ‘nation’s precious hobby’ (Šiftová 2020) has figured in the negotiations of belonging in Czech (post)socialist cultural politics. The first part of the paper
provides an analysis of the instrumental role mushrooms and their foragers have played in the articulation of Czech national identity and the country’s self-positioning within the broader frame of the current hegemonic geopolitics rooted in European colonialism. In the second part I close-read art works and other cultural practices that engage with fungi to envision new forms of belonging beyond the constraints of this hegemony, including art installation
‘Nothing Nowhere into Something Somewhere’ (Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová, 2015) and poem ‘The Czech are Excellent Mushroom Hunters’ (Milan Kozelka, 2013).