16 min Read Now
Breathing 2026: Microorganisms
Artist Zhao Rongjie’s filmed documentation of her “Microorganisms” project, where she cultivates, cares for, and creates art from bacterial cellulose.
Zhao Rongjie
Zhao Rongjie is a Chinese painter, visual artist, and videographer who studied oil painting and copperplate engraving at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She lives in an ancient stone home in Dali, Yunnan Province, China.
4 min Read Now
Wooden House /木头”房子“
A short film by Chinese artist Zhao Rongjie documenting the wooden “houses” she carved to house mushroom spore prints.
106 min Watch Now
Akha
A full-length documentary set on the frontiers of China and Southeast Asia that offers an intimate, layered view into one of the region’s most marginalized and misunderstood ethnic groups.
3 min Watch Now
Seeds & Seeds: Lisu
Episode 5 of an ethnographic docuseries from Yunnan Province where efforts to rewild the ancestral homelands of ethnic Lisu have forced communities to give up hunting and traditional agriculture and instead seek alternative means of survival.
25 min Watch Now
Seeds & Seeds: Tibet
Episode 4 of an ethnographic docuseries from Tibetan Yunnan that explores the decisions communities face when modern development and environmental fragility converge.
26 min Watch Now
Seeds & Seeds: Dai
Episode 3 of the ethnographic docuseries introduces three generations of Dai artisans who are preserving Hinayana Buddhist traditions and community identity through creative means.
24 min Watch Now
Seeds & Seeds: Xiangtang
Episode 2 of an ethnographic docuseries that explores agricultural traditions in one of Yunnan’s isolated, unrecognized ethnic minority communities.
24 min Watch Now
Seeds & Seeds
Episode 1 of an ethnographic docuseries that examines the relationships between community, culture and seeds in southwest China.
7 min Read Now
Breathing: Opening Night in Chengdu
Soon after the ban on public gatherings was lifted in China, Zhao Rongjie traveled to the capital of Sichuan Province to display two years of silkworm cocoon installations, mushroom spore prints, and embroidered silk tapestries.
30 min Watch Now
Listening 2021: Mycelicopia
Conceptual artist Zhao Rongjie brings the psychedelia of spore prints to film in an hypnotic visual collage of rare mycelia and symbolic natural (and unnatural) soundscapes.
27 min Watch Now
Field Diary: Among the Mushroom Hunters
In the mountains of southwest China, conceptual artist and director Zhao Rongjie meets a husband and wife team of mushroom hunters who welcome her into their home and introduce her to a simpler, antiquated world of physical labour, spiritual inheritance, and symbiosis with nature.
11 min Read Now
Breathing 2021: Field Notes Week 2
Conceptual artist Zhao Rongjie chronicles daily life on Jizu Mountain, as she helps her local hosts Da Ge and Da Sao harvest walnuts and mushrooms to sell at the weekly market.
