Winter worm, summer grass

Longlati presents the first solo exhibition in China of French artist Mimosa Echard, which is officially part of the 2026 Festival Croisements program. Titled 冬虫夏草 Winter worm, summer grass, the exhibition takes the inter-species metamorphosis of the cordyceps—a fungus that crosses biological classifications—as a metaphor for the mutation at the heart of Echard’s practice. Bringing together over thirty pivotal works from the past decade alongside new site-specific productions, the exhibition presents her complex and prolific practice in a state of constant metabolism.

The exhibition unfolds from a revisiting of her landmark installation Escape more, for which she was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2022. Escape more is an ambitious experiment in frontality and concealment: an abstract tableau visible through a transparent barrier of flowing water. On the other side of the glass wall, a vast visual archive of metabolic processes and media blur together: urine, blood, contraceptive pills, looping videos, paintings, newspaper, all filtered through synthetic fluid. Differing from the original, this Shanghai iteration undergoes a critical paradigm shift: deconstructing the installation into a "waiting room," viewers first observe the layered perspectives of the gallery’s depths to then step through the barrier, becoming themselves an element of the installation.

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