Żywica* Solar Plexus opened on Thursday at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.
The show, which runs run until September 27, fills five gallery rooms with video projections, sound installations, performances and objects made from organic and industrial materials.
Much of the wood, resin and other natural material comes from tree felling and industrial timber processing.
Shust works across several artistic forms and draws on ethnobotany, the study of relationships between people and plants. He is particularly interested in old beliefs surrounding trees and forests in Belarus, Eastern Europe and the Baltic region.
Curator Michalina Sablik said these ancient traditions provide the exhibition with much of its symbolism. The works examine how people once sought spiritual connections with nature and how technology is changing that relationship.
"Machines increasingly allow us to dream of eternal life outside the body or of overcoming the limits of communication," Sablik said.
The exhibition has been designed as a network rather than a single story with a fixed beginning and end.
"Walking through it, visitors can discover relationships between the works and their symbolism," Sablik said. "There is no single linear narrative."
Shust said he wanted to create an experience involving several senses, particularly sight, hearing and smell. He hopes visitors will feel that they have entered a parallel dimension.
"People have always sought different forms of intoxication or intense, extreme experiences," he said. "I believe art can create such states and invite us to imagine alternative futures."
The exhibition also explores animism, the belief that animals, plants, natural phenomena and objects possess a spiritual essence. Shust connects those traditions with posthumanism, a field of thought that challenges the idea that humans are the only intelligent or influential beings in the world.
Artificial intelligence becomes another presence within this network of humans, plants, animals and machines.
"Artificial intelligence is slowly enveloping the entire planet," Shust said. He added that it was being used both to manage the world and in processes that damage nature or intensify violence.
"I am not a technological pessimist or an opponent of technological development," he said. "But I like to consider alternative ways of using it."
For the opening, Shust has worked with Belarusian migrants in Poland on a group performance titled Birds with Human Heads.
Inspired by religious practices involving trance and unfamiliar languages, the work examines communication between people and with animals, plants and machines.
A recording will later become part of the exhibition.
Resin, or żywica in Polish, is central to the show. Sablik said the material has historically been used in incense, medicine and funeral rituals. Its name is related to the Slavic word for life or living.
Shust also compares tree roots with the human nervous system. The solar plexus, a network of nerves in the abdomen, serves as a symbol of connection between the human body and wider natural systems.
"Each of us carries the sun within us," he said.