Alexandra Fongaro was born in New Jersey in 1993. She currently lives and works in Rome, Italy. (Photo Misia Bottaro)

There are predictions that humankind is destroying the Earth, but for whom? Humanity may extinguish itself, yet the force of nature will endure. The industrial systems that erode ecosystems are brief gestures against geological time. Long after human dominance recedes, new generations of flora and fauna will adapt and evolve beyond us. Yet as monocultures expand and genetic modification accelerates, what kind of world will survive us?

Artificial nature repeats itself in endless fields of mono crops, landscapes that inform my painted works. In the name of efficiency and research, chlorophyll is sacrificed, as is the intensity of pigment on my canvasses and paper. The food chain is continually modified to suit geographic preference and market demand: produce grows larger, more uniform, more durable, yet increasingly diluted, estranged from taste. What forms of communication will emerge among flora and fauna once human control ceases, when it is no longer silenced or interrupted?

I position myself as a vehicle rather than an author. My practice seeks to reduce the dominance of the self by relinquishing control to water, pigment, and sustainable supports-unprepared cotton canvas, recycled cotton paper, salvaged and donated human hair. Through processes that invite absorption, bleeding, and chance, the materials assert their own agency. I imagine cited scientific articles and popular beliefs, through the perspective of a lightbox, or microscope, in which time seemingly ceases, where shadows cannot be defined, and thus neither can time.

While the paintings envision ecological aftermaths, para pastoral landscapes shaped by human excess, the works incorporating donated hair operate as a counterpoint. Hair is a regenerative and renewable material with the capacity to absorb and adsorb. In contextualizing hair as a sustainable medium, I gesture toward resilience: even within systems of extraction and modification, the body retains the potential to regenerate.