Yevgeniya Kaganovich’s first residency at Lynden was built around grow, a four-year durational project that transformed recycled plastic bags into plant-like forms that grew into plantings and systems. Fortuitously, Kaganovich encountered a mushroom ring on the grounds at Lynden on the last day of the project. Back in her studio, she began to experiment with the propagation of mushrooms in and on the plastic forms. These growing experiments led her to think about time, matter, and transformation.

This led to Divergent Fates, a new multiyear project. Divergent Fates aims to explore the existence and experience of things through their own unique phenomenology, rather than through a human lens. Working with three archetypes—Tree, Chair, Paper—Kaganovich imagines the possible lives of a tree as it changes into furniture, or paper–and sometimes back again.

At Lynden, Kaganovich asks: If a tree were to intuit a chair, what would that chair be like? By growing and shaping trees into chairs, through a process of intentional planting, bending, and grafting, this piece imagines the tree’s conception and understanding of the chair.