Did you know that only 43% of your body is composed of human cells? Does that fact complicate the way you view your relationship to the rest of the natural world? Jonah King hopes so. King, an Irish interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the themes of human-nonhuman relationships, visited Kenyon on Tuesday to give a talk sponsored by the Department of Studio Art’s Mesaros Art Fund. Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Yue Nakayama introduced King to an excited audience in Archon Auditorium and read from their list of accolades: degrees from Columbia University and the National College of Art and Design, international exhibitions and numerous awards and fellowships. “Through emerging technologies, their multifaceted world-building projects examine how ecological intimacies influence individual and social identity,” Nakayama said.

During the next 40 minutes, King guided the audience through their career. They described the various projects they’ve worked on, showing images and videos of their art while they explained the meaning behind each piece. Their oeuvre is diverse and extensive; noteworthy pieces include a series of video sculptures of people embracing titled All My Friends are In the Cloud and a play called Bodies of Water about a fictional artist who disappeared during a sea voyage and whose ghost now haunts their former assistant turned lover. What all of King’s creative ventures have in common is their interrogation of what it means to be human and how our lives and actions impact the world around us. Describing these themes with a poetic metaphor, King said, “Our lives are very short, but our shadows are very long.”

King concluded their talk by showing their debut short film “Honey Fungus,” which recently premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The 10-minute interactive piece, which they describe on their website as “a sci-fi virtual reality installation that invites audiences to expand their sensory connection to the greater ecosystem,” takes viewers on a journey through abstract scenes inspired by fungal imagery. A series of disembodied voices speak throughout the film as the sound of a beating heart pulses in the background and ambient music plays. The film concludes with a thought-provoking invitation: “Refuse to be a finite being. Dissolve the illusion of your edges. Emanate into our total body. Accrue into the honey fungus.”

With these words resonating in the audience’s minds, King asked if anyone had questions. One student raised a hand and asked how King grapples with the complicated ethical and environmental issues of using AI to create art. They responded that this is something they’re still figuring out. They explained that all of the AI technology in “Honey Fungus” ran on local computers, which lessened its environmental impact. “That said, there isn’t really a clean answer that I have for that question,” they added. “It’s definitely something I think about a lot.” With the many ways that AI is rapidly changing how humanity engages with art, creativity and the world more broadly, the work of artists like King can hopefully inspire all of us to think more deeply about these issues. It certainly inspired me.