Irene Antonez is a Prague-based multimedia artist and musician. She creates surreal, dreamy, often psychedelic-looking paintings with a focus on fungi, microorganisms and the plant world. Her main areas of interest are microscopic research of fungi as well as ethnomycology, ethnobotany and old scientific illustration books. Some of the recurring themes of Antonez’s work are the consciousness and intelligence of the natural world the mircro-macro cosmos we are part of, as well as such processes as metamorphosis, symbiosis, and “plant-thinking”. 

One of the ways the artist sees her work is as an attempt to fulfill her curiosity towards the ever-becoming and ever-changing nature of plants and fungi, as well as to get back to her family roots through mushroom obsession. In her immersive, and other-worldly-looking paintings, Antonez is playing with combinations of various scales and layers to draw attention to the importance of tiny microscopic creatures to the world that is becoming more and more disconnected from its natural origins. The artist’s work is a constantly evolving search for different ways of putting an emphasis on the spirit or « soul » in each living being of any scale or size.