Updates into the creative process (2023) 


In the next weeks:

VIRTUAL PANEL
Curated Conservation: A Virtual Panel Conversation with
Re-Imagining Conservation: From Many Viewpoints 
Exhibiting Artists
October 8, 2023 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm EST

Happening now: 

GROUP EXHIBITION
RISD 2023 Grad Biennial
Interior Atlas: Ways of Research
Sol Koffler Graduate Student Gallery @ RISD 
co-curated by Anne West and Holly Gaboriault
September 7th - October 12th 2023

GROUP EXHIBITION
Re-Imagining Conservation: From Many Viewpoints
National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Animation of “Below and Above, a Floating Wetland Supports Life” in collaboration with Holly Ewald
July 1st  - November 13th, 2023

In the past weeks: 

NEWS FEATURE
EcoRI wrote about our floating wetland structure. Read the article “Award-Winning Floating Wetland Possible Remedy for Blue-Green Algae Blooms.” 

AWARD
Below and Above, A Floating Wetland Supports Life was recognized as the winning art installation of the outdoor exhibition “Art on the Trails: Transformation 2023”

SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION
ART ON THE TRAILS: TRANSFORMATION 2023
on Ice Pond at the Elaine and Philip Beals Preserve Southborough, Massachusetts
Constructed floating wetland “Below and Above, a Floating Wetland Supports Life” in collaboration with August Lehrecke, Matthew P. Muller, Holly Ewald, Hope Leeson, Maxwell Fertik
June 10  - September 17th, 2023

READINGS CURATION & DISCUSSION FACILITATION
Metabolic Studio
Learning & Mending “Ways of Being” Series
Each Tuesday from 8:30 to 10 PM EST on Zoom we are reading & discussing selected chapters from James Bridle’s book “Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence”
April 4th -  June 20th 2023

The syllabus can be accessed here.

PHOTOGRAPHY
The Atlantic
Photograph of an earthworm taken in my
community garden plot
May 31st 2023 

COLLECTIVE POETRY READING & LIVE PERFORMANCE
Edna Lawrence Nature Lab | Rhode Island School of Design
Readings by poet Eleni Sikelianos from her latest work, "Your Kingdom," along with the writing of other poets and scholars, including myself. 
April 19th 2023

VIRTUAL LECTURE 
Rhode Island School of Design  
Alumni Speaking Series  Between a Bookshelf and a Pond
March 20th 2023

Alexandra Ionescu is an ecological artist-researcher based on the ancestral land of the Narragansett and Wampanoag people, known today as Providence, Rhode Island. Her work is situated somewhere between a bookshelf and a pond, between order and disorder, between knowing and unlearning. In her creative process, she actively seeks becoming and the metamorphosis of perception as a way to both reimagine knowledge systems and communicate understanding. Her method of research is informed by watchfulness, where chance encounters, non-linearity, randomness, and associations are followed with trust.

She graduated with a MA in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies from the Rhode Island School of Design and an online MS in Biomimicry from Arizona State University in 2021. Furthermore, she was selected to join the 5th cohort of the Biomimicry Professional Program (Pro) where she received comprehensive training in how to translate lessons from the more-than-human world to human design. 

Her thesis at RISD, A Pond Becomes a Forest, explored how to construct a new mental model of perceiving the natural world by questioning how we acquire knowledge of the Earth, categorization, close observation of life cycles, and habitat creation. In an effort to share the dynamic nature of this exploration, she continues to evolve a documentation practice that reflects the deconstruction of thought in motion. 

Since graduating, she has been cultivating an understanding of how to combine art with ecological restoration to give back to the web of life and create the propensity for degraded ecosystems to heal with a focus on constructed wetlands made of natural materials. During this process, she has been identifying and learning from other artists, particularly women who are eco or environmental artists, doing similar work to what she hopes to one day grow into.

Currently, Alexandra is working at RISD’s Edna Lawrence Nature Lab as part of the RISD x Hyundai Motor Group Research Collaborative. 


Email: aionescu@alumni.risd.edu