About the Artist
Shengfeng Gao
My artistic practice explores the tensions between urbanization and nature, focusing on how human control disrupts natural evolution. Fire serves as both a material and a concept in my work, symbolizing destruction, renewal, and the unintended consequences of industrial expansion.
This year’s Los Angeles wildfires highlight the failure of rigid, human-centric systems. As cities expand outward from their cores, the desire for control over landscapes has erased natural evolutionary processes. Indigenous communities once used controlled burns to maintain ecological balance, but modern policies suppress these practices, leading to increasingly severe wildfires. The loss of these adaptive strategies reflects a broader pattern—human dominance over the environment often accelerates its decline.
Aligned with Fractured Horizons, my work engages with transformation, contradiction, and decentralization. Fire embodies the remnants of industrial control and the instability of a future shaped by automation and ecological forces. What happens when artificial environments become unsustainable? Could relinquishing control restore balance? By reexamining fire’s role in contemporary crises, my work challenges conventional narratives of progress and imagines a future where built and natural systems coexist in more adaptive, resilient ways. Through this lens, I invite viewers to reconsider their place within the landscapes they inhabit.
About the Artist
Shengfeng Gao
My artistic practice explores the tensions between urbanization and nature, focusing on how human control disrupts natural evolution. Fire serves as both a material and a concept in my work, symbolizing destruction, renewal, and the unintended consequences of industrial expansion.
This year’s Los Angeles wildfires highlight the failure of rigid, human-centric systems. As cities expand outward from their cores, the desire for control over landscapes has erased natural evolutionary processes. Indigenous communities once used controlled burns to maintain ecological balance, but modern policies suppress these practices, leading to increasingly severe wildfires. The loss of these adaptive strategies reflects a broader pattern—human dominance over the environment often accelerates its decline.
Aligned with Fractured Horizons, my work engages with transformation, contradiction, and decentralization. Fire embodies the remnants of industrial control and the instability of a future shaped by automation and ecological forces. What happens when artificial environments become unsustainable? Could relinquishing control restore balance? By reexamining fire’s role in contemporary crises, my work challenges conventional narratives of progress and imagines a future where built and natural systems coexist in more adaptive, resilient ways. Through this lens, I invite viewers to reconsider their place within the landscapes they inhabit.
Other featured artists
About the Artist
Shengfeng Gao
My artistic practice explores the tensions between urbanization and nature, focusing on how human control disrupts natural evolution. Fire serves as both a material and a concept in my work, symbolizing destruction, renewal, and the unintended consequences of industrial expansion.
This year’s Los Angeles wildfires highlight the failure of rigid, human-centric systems. As cities expand outward from their cores, the desire for control over landscapes has erased natural evolutionary processes. Indigenous communities once used controlled burns to maintain ecological balance, but modern policies suppress these practices, leading to increasingly severe wildfires. The loss of these adaptive strategies reflects a broader pattern—human dominance over the environment often accelerates its decline.
Aligned with Fractured Horizons, my work engages with transformation, contradiction, and decentralization. Fire embodies the remnants of industrial control and the instability of a future shaped by automation and ecological forces. What happens when artificial environments become unsustainable? Could relinquishing control restore balance? By reexamining fire’s role in contemporary crises, my work challenges conventional narratives of progress and imagines a future where built and natural systems coexist in more adaptive, resilient ways. Through this lens, I invite viewers to reconsider their place within the landscapes they inhabit.